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jJl««jjW-"lJ 



TIME TELLING 

through the ^ges 



BY 



Harry Qo ^r ear ley 




Published by 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 

for Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. 

NEW YORK, 1919 






PREPARED 

under the direction of 

W^t iirearle? S>erbite (i^rQant^ation 



Copyright 191 9 
RoBT. H. Ingersoll & Bro, 

NEW YORK 



1/ 







/ 



\ 



A 



k^ 



JAN -2 1920 



(Q)CI.A56i28 7 



T Tie FACE 



IN the midst of the '^orld war^ '\vhen ordinary forms of cele- 
bration seemed unsuitable^ this book was concei'\)ed by Robt. 
H. Ingersoll (S^ Bro., as a fitting memento ofthh 'Twenty- 
fifth ^Anniversary of their entrance into the "tvatch industry, and 
is oferedas a contribution to horological art and science. Its pub- 
lication Ivas deferred until after the signing of the peace covenant, 
The research l^ork for fact material Jpas performed Ippith de- 
Ipoted fidelity and discrimination by ^^JMrs. Katherine Morris- 
SEY Dodge, '^ho consulted libraries, trade publications, horolog- 
ical schools and authorities in leading Ippatch companies. The fol- 
lo')x>ing ypere helpfully kind to her : ^NYw Yorh^ T'ublic J^brary, 
J^Jp Tor^(^ity; The (Congressional ^brary, JVashington, D. C; 
ZS(^ark 'Public J^brary, T^wark, U'^^ Jersey; The Jewelers 
(Circular, J^w Torl^^Qity; Keystone 'Publishing (Company, 'Phila- 
delphia, Pennsylvania; iMr. John J. Bowman, J^ancaster, 
Pennsylvania; z^aj or Paul M. Chamberlain,^^/^/V^^o, ////- 
nois; Hamilton Watch Qompany, J^ancaster, Pennsylvania; cJWr. 
Henry G. Abbott, of the Qalculagraph (Company, ^N^^pp York^ 
C^ty, and others, 

Qredit is also due to z^ifCr. Walter D. Teague, the ^pell- 
k^d^vn artist ofCNVw Yorh^Qity, '\vho acted as art editor and super- 
vised the preparation of illustrations, typography and other art 
and mechanical features. 



The photographic compositions are the result of the enthusiasm, 
the understanding and the art of zM'r. Lejaren a' Hiller, of 
y^yt> York Qty. In this connection the courtesy ofiM'r. Henry 
W. Kent, Secretary of the (^Metropolitan z^^useum of zArt, 
U^'^dyp York^Qity, in permitting the use of collections of the museum 
in the preparation of illustrations, is appreciated. 

Harry C. Brearley 



*&63- 



Co:^cre:hCfs 



PAGE 

Foreword ii 

Chapter i, l^he Man Animal and Nature's 'T'ime Pieces 1 5 

Chapter 11, The Land Between the Rivers . .21 

Chapter iii, How Man Began to Model After Nature . 36 

Chapter iv, 'Telling Time hy the ''Water Thief . . 49 

Chapter v, How Father Time Got his Hour Glass . . 59 

Chapter vi, The Clocks Which Named Themselves . 66 

Chapter vii, The Modern Clock and Its Creators . . yy 

Chapter viii, The Watch That Was Hatched From The 

Nuremhurg Egg 94 

Chapter ix, How a Mechanical Toy Became a Scientific 

Time Piece 106 

Chapter x, The ''Worshipful Company'' and English 

Watchmaking 118 

Chapter xi, What Happened in France and Switzerland 131 

Chapter xii, How an American Industry Came on 

Horseback 147 

Chapter XIII, America Learns to Make Watches. . 161 

Chapter xiv, Checkered History 176 

Chapter xv, "The Watch That Wound Forever' . . 184 

Chapter xvi, "The Watch That Made The Dollar 

Famoiis" 196 

Chapter xvii, Putting Fifty Million Watches Into 

Service 206 

*97e- 



Chapter XYiiiy T'he End of the Journey. . . .218 

Appendix A, How it Works 230 

Appendix B, Bibliography 235 

Appendix C, American Watch Manufacturers {Chron- 
ology) 241 

Appendix D, Well Known Watch Collections. . .250 

Appendix E, Encyclopedic Dictionary .... 25^ 



-&8^ 



7(0 / r 



TIME TELLING 
THROUGH THE AGES 

zAn ■Appreciation by 



m '2 1920 






TIME TELLING THROUGH 
THE AGES 

^n <iAppreciation by Z)r. Frank Qrane 



WHAT time is it ? V\'e little suspect that when 
we ask that simple question we have put a 
problem that it takes the patient labor of 
thousands of men and the help of many centuries to an- 
swer. The Vv'atch is the triumph of cooperation. Not one 
man, but many men, some of them dead and gone long 
ago, made possible the little metal timepiece on the 
soldier's wrist, at which he glances to determine the hour 
of his charge. 

As I have read the pages of this book I have realized as 
never before how fascinating is the romance of mankind's 
team-play, how amazingly woven together are all the 
threads of this universe. From ever}" grain of sand on the 
sea-shore run cords that bind it to the sun and the distant 
stars. Not a beat of the bird's wing in the still forest but 
sends vibrations to the remotest mountain. What a com- 
pact, correlated, baffling mechanism is this world ! 



For my little watch, just a small silver spot upon my 
wrist, is the child of what remote ancestors, the product of 
what long and struggling evolution ! It is a microcosm — a 
universe in miniature. Its line runs back to the huge "tur- 
nip" our grandfathers carried, to the ponderous clocks of 
former day in the hall and churchtower, to the hour-glass 
in the student's laboratory, to the sun-dial in the garden, 
on back to the moving shadow of the tree or rock that told 
the cave-man the hour set to meet his mate or face his foe. 

Its line runs up to the circling sun, first and greatest 
timepiece, whose punctual rise and setting marked off into 
pages the brief story of human life; and to the stars, some 
fixt, some slowly moving in orderly change; and to the 
moon, that in regular alternation swelled to full brightness 
and shrank to a crescent line. 

Tennyson plucked *'the flower from the crannied wall," 
and musing upon it in his hand, thought that if he could 
understand that little bloom, he would understand "what 
God is and what man is." Very much the same idea comes 
to me as I look at my watch. To comprehend that com- 
pact mechanism is to "grasp the scheme of things entire" 
— history, and the dreams of men, evolution with its up- 
ward urge, the intricacies of inathematics, the mysteries 
of astronomy, and the ordered interplay of all the wide 
labors of men. 

For this "Ingersoll" upon my wrist is the product of a 



factory, of a system. I can shut my eyes and see long lines 
of workers, men and women, leaving their homes and wind- 
ing toward the factory gates, see them bending over their 
benches and operating their machines, see the watches 
packed in their cases, hauled upon trains and steamships to 
the four ends of the earth, then distributed and displayed 
by the dealers, at last coming into personal use and posses- 
sion of the myriad people. 

You who love the strange and unusual may well peruse 
these pages, for they unfold the curious tale of cumulative 
invention, a much more marvelous story than any fairy 
tale or the doings of antique kings. The Thousand and One 
Tales of the Arabian Nights are not more interesting than 
this account of how the stars and the passing hours were 
through long ages of experiment finally confined into a tiny 
silver casket, and given, not to some prince for a fabulous 
sum, but to Everyman and for a dollar. 

In every field of human endeavor some salient figure 
arises, some King — not the hereditary ruler who comes to 
prominence by chance, because "his blood has crept 
through scoundrels since the flood," but the Genius, the 
one specially Endowed by the Creator, the one whom 
Carlyle calls "the king-man, that is the can-ing, cun-ning 
man, the man who can," the one who Accomplishes. 

And in the realm of Watches the name of Ingersoll is 
royal. For the Inger$olls have made the astronomer's 



complicated instrument the daily tool of the plow-boy, 
and taken from queens their ornament and costly play- 
thing and put it in the pocket of all the workers of the 
world. 

But the Ingersolls themselves were but the product of 
their time and environment. They, as well as their watch, 
are but bubbles upon the mighty wave of evolutionary 
progress. For every great man is the child of the marriage 
of Native Genius and Opportunity. Lincoln was not only 
the right man but set in the right place. Cromwell and 
Charlemagne, as well as Edison, Stevenson and Watt, 
were not only equipped by nature for their important 
tasks, but the age in which they lived was just ready for 
them. For each man's success, all humanity co-works. 
Even of Christ it is said that He came at His appointed 
time, and His own phrase was "Mine hour is come." 

Also at the hour marked for them on the Calendar of 
Destiny came the Ingersolls. We trace here the long un- 
dulating line of the genesis of the timepiece. From moving 
shadow, down through the sun-dial, the clepsydra or 
water-thief, the sand-glass, the discovery of the law of the 
pendulum, the construction of the first rude clock-mech- 
anism, the secret of the "escapement," the hatching of the 
"Nuremburg egg," the making of a useful timepiece out of 
a mechanical toy and a scientific curiosity, the growth of 
watchmaking in France, Switzerland and England, the 



advent of Yankee ingenuity in the business, until we come 
to Ingersoll who appHed Democracy to the industry and 
conjoined the heritage of the ages with the spirit of the 
Twentieth Century, giving to the miUions what had been 
the prize of the few, and, by combining organizing abil- 
ity with craftsmanship, adding to the comfort and effi- 
ciency of the race by placing a reliable timepiece in the 
hand of every worker. 

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this story, how- 
ever, is the commercial portion of it. It takes as much 
brains and energy and vision to sell a thing, to make people 
want it, as it does to manufacture the thing itself. 

Selling is the great American game. It combines the 
risks of chance and the excitements of adventure with the 
ingenuity of making plans and devising systems. The adult 
American throws himself into it with the same abandon a 
child throws himself into his play. 

The American has been accused of being money-mad, a 
worshiper of the almighty dollar. This charge arises from 
a superficial view of his nature. It is not money that he 
wants, it is not the dollar that he works for. The thing that 
the American desires in his heart more than anything else 
is Achievement. He values dollars only as they connote 
Achievement. 

In America the honor goes to the man who makes money 
largely because in the making of that money it was neces- 



sary for him to display those qualities of resourcefulness 
and energy which we admire. 

Reading such a book as this, the American boy cannot 
fail to be impressed that for him also the roads are open, 
the door of opportunity is unlocked. His success in life 
depends not upon fear and favor, but upon his own ability 
in industry. 

This book is a record of something done. It is the story 
of a great achievement. It tells how ambitious and de- 
termined American young men applied themselves to one 
problem of their age, took at the flood that tide which 
bears on to fortune, became successful manufacturers and 
merchants, gave employment to thousands of self-respect- 
ing workmen and applied a useful and necessary article of 
personal use to millions of their fellow beings. 



-&8^ 



ILL usriijrio^j^s 

TO FACE PAGE 

The spirit of Time . 

The Cave Man and the Moving Shadow . . . i6 
Time TelHng in the "Land Between the Rivers" . 32 

The First Recorded Sun Dial 40 

The Clepsydra, or Water Clock 56 

Types of the Earliest Time Tellers . . . .64 
Galileo Discovering the Principle of the Pendulum . 72 

A Time Piece of the Middle Ages 80 

Ancestors of the Watch 88 

The First Pocket Time Piece 96 

The "Nuremburg Egg," the First Real Watch . . 104 

First Forms of the Watch 112 

Sixteenth Century Watches 120 

Late — In Spite of His Two Watches . . . .128 

Seventeenth Century Watches 136 

The Swiss ''Manufacturer" and a Craftsman . . 144 

The First Yankee Clock Maker 152 

"Grandfather's Clocks". . . . . . .160 

Eighteenth Century Watches 168 

"Quantity Production" in 1850 176 

A Glimpse of a Giant Industry . ... . . 200 

Twentieth Century Watches 208 

Time Telling in the Dark 216 

Time Pieces Vital to Industry 224 



*&9 



-CU 



FORSWOT^ 



IT WAS a moonless night in No Man's Land. A man 
in khaki stood silently waiting in a frontline trench. 
In the darkness, his eyes were drawn, fascinated, to 
the luminous figures on the watch-dial at his wrist. A 
splinter of pale light, which he knew to be the hour-hand, 
rested upon the figure 11. A somewhat longer splinter 
crept steadily from the figure 12. 

*Tast eleven," he whispered to himself. "Less than 
twenty minutes now." 

To the right and to the left of him, he, now and then, 
could see his waiting comrades in the blackness of the 
trench, their outlines vaguely appearing and disappearing 
with the intermittent flares of distant star-shells. He knew 
that they, too, were intent upon tiny figures in small lum- 
inous circles and upon the steady, relentless progress of 
other gleaming minute-hands which moved in absolute 
unison with the one upon his own wrist. He knew, also, 
that far in the rear, clustered about their guns, were other 
comrades tensely counting off the passing minutes. 

At twenty minutes past eleven, the artillery bombard- 
ment would begin and would continue until exactly mid- 
night. Then would come the barrage — the protecting cur- 
tain of bursting shells behind which the khaki-clad figure 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

and his companions would advance upon the enemy's 
trenches — perhaps also upon eternity. 

How strangely silent it seemed after the crashing chaos 
of the last few days ! There were moments when the rum- 
ble of distant guns almost died away, and he could hear 
the faint ticking of his timepiece or a whispered word out 
of the darkness near at hand. He likened the silence to the 
lull before a storm. 

Five minutes thus went by ! 

In another fifteen minutes, the fury of the bombard- 
ment would begin; it would doubtless draw an equally 
furious bombardment from the enemy's guns. 

At twelve-ten plus forty-five seconds, he and his platoon 
were to "go over the top" and plunge into the inferno of 
No Man's Land. That was the moment set for the advance 
— the moment when the barrage would lift and move 
forward. 

The slender hand on the glowing dial stole steadily on- 
ward. It was ten minutes after now. 

Ten minutes after eleven — ^just one hour plus forty-five 
seconds to wait ! His thoughts flew back to his home in the 
great city beyond the sea. 

Ten minutes after eleven — ^why that would be only ten 
minutes after six in New York! How plainly he could 
picture the familiar scenes of rushing, bustling life back 
there! Crowds were now pouring into the subways and 



Foreword 

surface cars or climbing to the level of the *'L's." This was 
the third — the latest homeward wave. The five o'clock 
people had, for the most part, already reached their homes 
and were thinking about their dinner; the five-thirties 
were well upon their way. 

How the millions of his native city and of other cities 
and towns, and even of the country districts, all moved 
upon schedule ! Clocks and watches told them when to get 
up, when to eat their breakfasts, when to catch their trains, 
reach their work, eat their lunches, and return to their 
homes. Newspapers came out at certain hours; mails were 
delivered at definite moments; stores and mills and fac- 
tories all began their work at specified times. 

What a tremendous activity there was, back there in 
America, and how smoothly it all ran — smooth as clock- 
work! Why, you might almost say it ran by clock-work! 
The millions of watches in millions of pockets, the millions 
of clocks on millions of walls, all running steadily together 
— ^these were what kept the complicated machinery of 
modern life from getting tangled and confused. 

Yes; but what did people do before they had such time- 
pieces.? Back in the very beginning, before they had in- 
vented or manufactured anything — far back in the days of 
the caveman — even those people must have had some 
method of telling time. 

A bright star drew above the shadowy outline of a hill. 



'J'itne 'Telling Through the Ages 

At first the man in khaki thought that it might be a distant 
star-shell; but no, it was too steady and too still. Ah yes, 
the stars were there, even in the very beginning — and the 
moon and the sun, they were as regular then as now; per- 
haps these were the timepieces of his earliest ancestors. 

A slight rustle of anticipation stirred through the wait- 
ing line and his thoughts flashed back to the present. His 
eyes fixed themselves again on the ghostly splinters of light 
at his wrist. The long hand had almost reached the figure 4 
— the moment when the bombardment would begin. 

He and his comrades braced themselves — and the night 
was shattered by the crash of artillery. 



*ei4B- 



riM£ rELLIth(G 
TH%OUgH TH£ -utgES 



CHAPTER ONE 

"The ^J)(Can Animal and J\(ature^s 
"Timepieces 

THE story of the watch that you hold in your hand 
to-day began countless centuries ago, and is as 
long as the history of the human race. When our 
earliest ancestors, living in caves, noted the regular succes- 
sion of day and night, and saw how the shadows changed 
regularly in length and direction as day grew on toward 
night, then was the first, faint, feeble germ of the beginning 
of time-reckoning and time-measurement. The world was 
very, very young, so far as man was concerned, when there 
occurred some such scene as this : 

It is early morning. The soft, red sandstone cliffs are 
bathed in the golden glow of dawn. As the great sun climbs 
higher in the eastern sk}^ the sharply outlined shadow of 
the opposite cliff descends slowly along the western wall 
of the narrow canyon. A shaggy head appears from an 
opening, half-way up the cliff, and is followed by the gro- 
tesque, stooping figure of a long-armed man, hairy and 
nearly naked, save for a girdle of skins. He grasps a short, 
thick stick, to one end of which a sharpened stone has been 
bound by many crossing thongs, and, without a word, he 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

makes his way down among the bushes and stones toward 
the bed of the creek. 

Another head appears at the same opening in the cUff — 
that of a brown-skinned woman with high cheek-bones, a 
flat nose, and tangled hair. She shouts after the retreating 
form of the man, and he stops, and turns abruptly. Then he 
points to the edge of the shadow far above his, and, with a 
sweeping gesture, indicates a large angular rock lying in 
the bed of the stream near by. Apparently understanding 
the woman nods and the man soon disappears into the 
brush. 

The forenoon wears along, and the line of shadow creeps 
down the face of the canyon wall until it falls at last 
across the angular rock against which the dashing waters 
of the stream are breaking. The woman who has been 
moving about near the cave opening begins to look ex- 
pectant and to cast quick glances up and down the canyon. 
Presently the rattle of stones caught her ear and she sees 
the long-armed man picking his way down a steep trail. 
He still carries his stone-headed club in one hand, while 
from the other there swings by the tail the body of a small, 
furry animal. Her eyes flash hungrily, and she shows her 
strong, white teeth in a grin of anticipation. 

Perhaps it has not been hard to follow the meaning of 
this little drama of primitive human need. Our own needs 
are not so very different, even in this day, although our 




The Cave Man and the Moving Shadov^ 

"77/ be back when the shadow touches that stone.'' It was by 
such crude expedients that our primitive ancestors timed their 

engagements. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

. ..,,, s his way down amo" > ^ '»• l^n Jif>^ j)nd stones toward 
the bed of the creek. 

Another head appears at the same opening in the diff — 
that of a brown-skinned woman with high cheek-bones, a 
flat nose, and tangled hair. She shouts after the retreating 
form of the man, and he stops, and turns abruptly. Then he 
points to the edge of the shadow far above his, and, with a 
sweeping gesture, indicates a large angular rock lying in 
the bed of the stream near by. Apparently understanding 
the woman n.-vk ;>r:<» fh,- r^Tin soon <11^:>i ;..-- rx into the 
brush . 

The forenoon wears along, and the line of shadow creeps 
down the face of the canyon wail until it falls at last 
across the angular rock against which the dashing waters 
of the stream are breaking. The woman who has been 
moving about near the cave opening begins to look ex- 
pectant and to cast quick glances up and down the canyon. 
Presently the rattle of stones caught her ear and she sees 
the long-armed man picking his way down a steep trail. 
He still carries his stone-headed club in one hand, while 
from the other there swings by the tail the body of a small, 
furry animal. Her eyes flash hungrily, and sb^ <hi>\\< her 
strong, white teeth in a grin of anticipation. 

Perhaps it has not been hard to follow the meaning of 
this little drama of primitive human need. Our own needs 
arp ^n^ sn very different, even in this day, although our 

woqahS omivoM 3HT ctvi/'WaM 3va3 3hT 



''^?^I3^€^^^»H^^» 



V >. - ,M»V-,- 




«i 



t 




'The Man Animal and Nature s Timepieces 

manners and methods have somewhat changed since the 
time of the caveman. Like ourselves, this savage pair 
awoke with sharpened appetite, but, unhke ourselves, 
they had neither pantry nor grocery store to supply them. 
Their meal-to-be, which was looking for its own breakfast 
among the rocks and trees, must be found and killed for 
the superior needs of mankind, and the hungry woman had 
called after her mate in order to learn when he expected to 
return. 

No timepieces were available, but that great timepiece 
of nature, the sun, by which we still test the accuracy of 
our clocks and watches, and a shadow falling upon a cer- 
tain stone, served the need of this primitive cave-dweller in 
making and keeping an appointment. 
^ The sun has been, from the earliest days, the master of 
Time. He answered the caveman's purpose very well. The 
rising of the sun meant that it was time to get up; his 
setting brought darkness and the time to go to sleep. It 
was a simple system, but, then, society in those days was 
simple — and strenuous. 

For example, it was necessary to procure a new supply 
of food nearly every day, as prehistoric man knew little of 
preserving methods. Procuring food was not so easy as one 
might think. It meant long and crafty hunts for game, and 
journeys in search of fruits and nuts. All this required day- 
light. By night-time the caveman was ready enough to 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

crawl into his rock-home and sleep until the sun and his 
clamoring appetite called him forth once more. In fact, his 
life was very like that of the beasts and the birds. 

But, of course, he was a man, after all. This means that 
a human brain was slowly developing behind his sloping 
forehead, and he could not stop progressing. 

After a while — a long while, probably — ^we find him and 
his fellows gathered together into tribes and fighting over 
the possession of hunting-grounds or what not, after the 
amiable human fashion. Thus, society was born, and with 
it, organization. Tribal warfare implied working together; 
working together required planning ahead and making ap- 
pointments; making appointments demanded the making 
of them by something — by some kind of a timepiece that 
could indicate more than a single day^ since the daily posi- 
tion of light and shadows was now no longer sufficient. 
Man looked to the sky again and found such a timepiece. 

Next to the sun, the moon is the most conspicuous of the 
heavenly objects. Its name means "the Measurer of Time." 
As our first ancestors perceived, the moon seemed to have 
the strange property of changing shape; sometimes it was 
a brilliant disk; sometimes a crescent; sometimes it failed 
to appear at all. These changes occurred over and over 
again — always in the same order, and the same number of 
days apart. What, then, could be more convenient than for 
the men inhabiting neighboring valleys to agree to meet at 



'The Man Animal and Nature s Timepieces 

a certain spot, with arms and with several days* provisions, 
at the time of the next full moon ? — moonlight being also 
propitious for a night attack. 

For this and other reasons, the moon was added to the 
sun as a human timepiece, and man began to show his 
mental resources — he was able to plan ahead. Note, how- 
ever, that he was not concerned with measuring the pas- 
sage of time, but merely with fixing upon a future date; it 
was not a question of how long but ofwhe-n. 

This presumptuous, two-legged fighting animal, from 
whom we are descended, and. many of whose instincts we 
still retain, began to enlarge his warfare, and thereby to 
improve his organization. For the sake of his own safety, 
he learned to combine with his fellows, finding strength in 
numbers, like the wolves in the pack; or, like ants and 
bees, finding in the combined efforts of many a means of 
gaining for each individual more food and better shelter 
than he could win for himself alone. 

For example, it was possible that a neighboring tribe, 
instead of waiting to be attacked, was planning an attack 
upon its own account. It would not do to be surprised at 
night. Sentries must be established to keep watch while 
others slept, and to waken their comrades in case of need. 
Our very word "watch" is derived from the old Anglo- 
Saxon word "waeccan," meaning "wake." And yet people 
who tried to watch for long at a stretch would be apt to 



^ime 'Telling Through the Ages 

doze. They must be relieved at regular times; it was a 
matter of necessity, but how could one measure time at 
night ? 

Where man has been confronted with a pressing problem 
he has generally found its solution. Probably in this case 
the stars gave him a clue. If the sky were clear, their 
positions would help to divide the night into "watches" of 
convenient length. 

Thus did primitive man begin to study the skies. No 
longer a mere animal, he was beginning, quite uncon- 
sciously, to give indications of becoming a student. 



*&20S* 



CHAPTER TWO 

T'he Jl^nd "Between the levers 

N^OW we must jump over ages so vast in duration 
that all of our recorded history is by comparison, 
the merest fragment of time. During the pre- 
historic period, known to us only by certain bones, draw- 
ings, and traces of tombs and dwellings, and by a few rude 
implements, weapons, and ornaments, we must think of 
the human family as developing very, very slowly — ^grop- 
ing in the dawn of civilization while it ate and slept, 
hunted, and fought, and, gradually spread over various 
regions of the earth. 

It was in this interval, also, that man learned the use of 
fire and the fashioning of various tools. His club gave 
place to the spear, the knife, and the arrow-head weapons 
that were made at first by chipping flakes of flint to a sharp 
edge. Then, as his knowledge and skill slowly increased, he 
learned to work the softer metals and made his weapons 
and his tools of bronze. Meanwhile, he was taught, by 
observing in nature, to tame and to breed animals for his 
food and use, and to plant near home what crops he wished 
to reap, instead of seeking them where they grew in a wild 
state. Thus, he became a herdsman and farmer. 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

He no longer lived in caves or rude huts, but in a low, 
flat-roofed house built of heavy, rough stone, and, later, 
of stones hewn into shape or of bricks baked in the burning 
sunshine. Stone and clay carved or molded into images, 
and the colored earth, smeared into designs upon his walls, 
gave him the beginnings of art. And from drawing rude 
pictures of simple objects, as a child begins to draw even 
before knowing what it means to write, primitive man 
came at last to the greatest power of all — ^the art of writing. 

Through all this age man continued to regulate his ex- 
panding affairs by the timepieces of the sky — the sun, the 
moon, and the stars. He divided time roughly into days 
and parts of days, into nights and watches of the night, 
into moons and seasons — determining the latter probably 
by the migration of birds, the budding of trees and flowers, 
the falling of leaves and other happenings in nature. But 
never guessing how greatly interested future generations 
would be in the way he did things, he has left only a few 
records of his activities and these have been preserved by 
the merest accident. The historian and the press-agent 
were the inventions of later days. 

Thus we come down the ages to a date about 4000 B. C. 
at the very beginning of recorded history, and to one of 
the most ancient civilizations in the world — that of the 
region which we now call Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia lies 
in southwestern Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates 



^he Land Between the Rivers 

Rivers and not far from the traditional site of the Garden 
of Eden. The name by which we know it comes from the 
Greek, and means, "The land between the rivers" but the 
people who dwelt there at the time to which we refer called 
it the *'Land of Shinar." 

This is the region in which long afterward — so the Bible 
tells us — ^Abraham left his native town, Ur of the Chaldees, 
to make his pioneer journey to Palestine. This is the land 
where the great cities of Babylon and Nineveh afterward 
arose; Babylon, where Daniel interpreted the dream of 
King Nebuchadnezzar, and Nineveh, whence the Assy- 
rians, the fierce conquerors of the ancient world, "came 
down like a wolf on the fold" against the peaceful King- 
dom of Judah. It is the land where, thousands of years 
later, the famous Arab capital of Bagdad was built; it is 
the land of Harun al Raschid and the "Arabian Nights," 
and the land which the British Army conquered in a re- 
markable campaign against the Turks and Germans. 
Mesopotamia is a land of color, brilliant life, wonders and 
romance. Many students and statesmen believe that it 
will, in days to come, grow fruitful and populous again, 
that it will once more be great among the countries of the 
earth. It is a flat region, with wide-stretching plains. For 
the most part, there are no hills to limit the view of the 
skies, and the heavens are brilliant upon starry nights. 

In this favored portion of the earth, a high civilization 



1'ime T'elling 'Through the Ages 

had already been developed in the very earliest days of 
which we have authentic historic record. The caveman 
type had long disappeared and had been forgotten; people 
were already living in well-built cities of brick and stone. 
Their houses were low and flat-roofed, but the cities were 
surrounded with high and massive walls to protect thern 
from enemies, and here and there within rose great square 
towers which were also temples. Perhaps the famous 
Tower of Babel was one of these, for Babel, of course, is 
another name for Babylon, and its people are known to 
have worshipped on the tops of towers, as if, by so doing, 
they could reach nearer to their gods. The ancient Chal- 
deans were religious by nature, and because the skies 
contained the greatest things of which they knew, they 
identified many of their gods with the sun, the moon, and 
the stars, and they worshipped these in their temples. 

Thus, the sun was the god Shamash, the moon was Sin, 
Jupiter was Marduk, Venus was Ishtar, Mars was Nergal, 
Mercury was Neho, and Saturn was Ninib. 

In consequence, their priests came to give much of their 
time to a study of the movements of the stars. These 
priests, who were shrewd and learned men, discovered a 
great deal, but they kept their knowledge closely within 
the circle of their caste. Learning was not for everyone in 
those days because the priests posed as magicians able to 
interpret dreams, to explain signs, and to foretell the future. 



'The Land Between the Rivers 

This brought them much revenue; as prophets they were 
not unmindful of profits. 

When we consider that these astrologer-astronomers did 
not have telescopes or our other modern instruments, it is 
marvelous to see how many of the laws of the heavenly 
bodies they really did find out for themselves. Books could 
be filled, with the story of their discoveries. For example, 
they observed that the sun slowly changed the points at 
which it rose and set. During certain months, the place of 
sunrise traveled northward, and at the same time the sun 
rose higher in the sky, and at noon was more nearly over- 
head. At this time, the days were also longer, because the 
sun was above the horizon more of the time, and then it 
was summer. During certain other months, the sun trav- 
eled south again, and all these conditions were reversed; 
the days grew shorter and shorter, and it was winter. This 
is, of course, exactly what the sun appears to do here and 
now, and we may observe it for ourselves. But these Baby- 
lonian priests were the first to study these phenomena and 
accomplish something by applying their reasoning powers 
to the facts that presented themselves. They took the time 
which was consumed in this motion from the furthest north 
to the furthest south and return, and from that worked 
out their year. 

In order to calculate time, they next devised the zodiac, 
a sort of belt encircling the heavens and showing the course 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

of the sun, and the location of twelve constellations, or 
groups of stars, through which he would be seen to pass If 
his light did not blot out theirs. They divided the region of 
these twelve constellations into the same number of equal 
parts; consequently, the sun passing from any given point 
around the heavens to the same point, occupied In so doing 
an amount of time that was arbitrarily divided Into 
twelfths. 

But they also devised another twelve-part division of 
the year. They noticed that the moon went through her 
phases, from full moon to full moon in about thirty days. 
So one moon, or one month, corresponded with the pas- 
sage of the sun through one "sign" of the zodiac. Our own 
word "month'* might have been written "moonth," since 
that is its meaning. That gave them a year of twelve 
months, each month having thirty days, or three hundred 
and sixty days in all. 

Then from the seven heavenly bodies which they had 
Identified with seven great gods, they got the idea of a 
week of seven days, one day for the special worship of 
each god and named for him. 

In like manner, they divided the day and the night each 
into twelve hours; and the hour into sixty minutes and 
these again into sixty seconds. The choice of "sixty" was 
not a chance shot or accident; it was carefully selected for 
practical reasons since these old astronomers were wise 

*& 26 B- 



"The Land Between the Rivers 

and level-headed men. No lower number can be divided 
by so many other numbers as can sixty. Just look at your 
watch for a moment and notice how simply and naturally 
the minutes, divided into fives, fit into place between the 
figures for the hours, and, because sixty divides evenly 
by fifteen and thirty, we have quarter-hours and half-hours. 

Therefore, we should realize, with a bit of gratitude, 
that we owe these divisions of time, of which we still make 
use, to the ancient magician-priests of Babylon and Chal- 
dea, thousands and thousands of years ago. 

In doing all this, these early scientists developed at the 
same time an elaborate system of so-called '^magic" by 
which they pretended to foretell future events and the 
destinies of men born on certain days. This was an im- 
portant part of their priestcraft, and probably it was not 
the least profitable part. In fact, the priests called them- 
selves magi, meaning 'Vise men" in their language, and 
our word "magic" is derived from "magi." 

This magic, or prophetic study of the stars, we call as- 
trology to distinguish it from the true science oi astronomy. 
But mingled with it ail, these priests possessed a wonderful 
amount of genuine scientific knowledge. Their year of 
three hundred and sixty days was, of course, five days too 
short, as they presently found out for themselves. In six 
years, the difference would amount to thirty days, which 
was exactly the length of one of their months. So they cor- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

rected the calendar very easily by doubling the month 
Adar once in six years. Thus, every sixth year contained 
thirteen months instead of twelve; that was the origin of 
the leap-year principle which we still use, although more 
accurately. It can be seen that, with all their superstition 
and their befooling of other people, the priests themselves 
were by no means ignorant; they were really keen ob- 
servers. 

This calendar, by which we still measure the years and 
the seasons, is so interesting a thing that it is worth while 
to pause for a moment in our story in order to trace out its 
later development. The Babylonian calendar remained 
practically the same up to the time of Julius Caesar, only 
a few years before the Christian Epoch. The names of the 
months had naturally been changed into the Latin lan- 
guage; and the Romans, instead of doubling a whole 
month, had come to add the extra five days to several 
months, one day to each. That is the reason for some of 
our months having thirty-one days. 

When Caesar was Dictator of Rome, it had become 
known that the year of exactly 365 days was still a little 
too short. It should have been 365 J^. So Caesar in reform- 
ing the calendar, provided that the first, third, fifth, 
seventh, ninth, and eleventh months should be given 
thirty-one days each, and that the others should have 
thirty days, except in the case of February which should 



'The Land Between the Rivers 

have its thirtieth day only once in four years. A Httle 
later, his successor, the Emperor Augustus, after whom the 
month of August is named, decided that his month must 
be as long as July, which was Julius Caesar's month. 
Therefore, he stole a day from February and added one to 
August; then he changed the following months by making 
September and November thirty-day months and giving 
thirty-one days to October and December. 

The Julian calendar, with these changes by Augustus, 
remained in use until the year A. D. 1582, nearly a century 
after the discovery of America. Then it was learned that 
the average year of 365}^ days was still not exactly right 
according to the motion of the earth around the sun. The 
exact time is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, 
being 11 minutes and 14 seconds less than 36534 days. 
When, therefore, we add a day to the year every four 
years, as Caesar commanded, we are really adding too 
much. This excess was corrected by Pope Gregory XII in 
1582, when he changed the calendar so that the last year 
of a century should be a leap-year only when its number 
could be divided evenly by 400. Thus, 1700, 1800, and 
1900 were not leap-years, though the year 2000 will be. 
This new calendar, which is the one now generally in use 
in most of the world, is known as the Gregorian calendar. 

Thus the plan and principle of the calendar, as well as 
our smaller divisions of time, in spite of the small changes 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

by Caesar and Gregory, have remained from the Baby- 
lonian days down to the present; and we have done noth- 
ing to their system in all these thousands of years, except, 
incidentally to correct ,it. 

Only once in history have the measures of the ancient 
calendar been set aside. That was in France at the time 
of the Revolution, when the French people, in their pas- 
sionate hatred of all the traditional things that reminded 
them of their past sufferings, invented a new calendar, in 
which they changed the names of months and days, and 
counted the years from 1792, the first of their liberty. 
They also abolished all Sundays and religious festivals, and 
divided the day into ten hours. This played havoc with 
time-keeping, and caused great confusion. Watches and 
clocks were made with one circle of numbers for the new 
hours, and another, within, on which were shown the old 
hours which people could understand. But this complica- 
tion lasted only a few years, for the traditional system 
was soon restored. 

To return again to tTie era of the first calendar. While 
the wise men of Mesopotamia were engaged in mingling 
science and mystery, another civilization, the Egyptian, 
was developing upon the banks of the Nile and passing 
through much of the same stages. In due course the Per- 
sians conquered both Mesopotamia and Egypt and ab- 
sorbed their knowledge. Still later the wonderful Greek 



The Land Between the Rivers 

nation combined astronomy with mathematics in a way 
which makes us wonder to this day. This is the way in 
which civihzation has grown. Race after race, during 
century after century has added its new knowledge and 
discoveries to that which has been learned before. It is 
interesting to note that the astronomy of the Babylonians 
appears to have been paralleled independently by other 
ancient civilizations between which there was no apparent 
possibility of intercourse. The Chinese in the East and the 
Aztecs of Mexico, on the other side of the world, invented 
practically the same astronomical instruments as the 
Babylonians and made similar discoveries. All methods 
of indicating time have been steps upon the long road 
which has led to the making of modern timepieces. 

The progressive Greeks did not permit knowledge to be 
monopolized by the priesthood and probably their com- 
mon people knew more about the stars than most of the 
population of America do to this day. Sailors possessed 
no compasses, but they voyaged very skilfully with the 
guidance of the stars, while farmers, lacking our modern 
weather-reports and crop-bulletins, learned to govern their 
planting and harvesting by the positions of the heavenly 
bodies. 

In one sense, this is time-telling and in another it is not, 
but our ideas of time and astronomy have always been so 
closely associated that it is hard to think of one apart from 



^ime Telling' Through the Ages 

the other. This is because the movements of.the- earth, 
which produce night and day and the changes of the sea- 
sons, are our supreme court of time, our final standard for 
its measurement. And since we cannot see the earth move, 
we judge of its motion by the apparent movement of the 
heavenly bodies, just as we realize the movement of a 
train by watching the landscape rush past us as we go. / 

Some of the great Greek scientists, by the way, had 
even learned to foretell eclipses of the sun. According to 
Herodotus the one which occurred on May 28th, in the 
year 585 B. C, was predicted by Thales of Miletus, one of 
the famous "Seven Wise Men.'' This event was also cele- 
brated because of another interesting association; it 
stopped a battle between the armies of the Medes and the 
Lydians. Perhaps we can guess at what happened. Un- 
doubtedly the eclipse was interpreted by the armies as a 
sign of divine anger, for the ancients identified many of the 
forces and objects of nature as gods, and Phoebus Apollo, 
who it was believed daily drove his flaming chariot across 
the sky, was the great divinity of the sun. Furthermore, 
these gods were very apt to meddle with happenings upon 
the earth, particularly with wars, as anyone who has read 
the "Iliad" will recall. 

Imagine, then, the two armies about to go to battle when 
suddenly something appeared to go wrong with the sun. 
There to their amazement, in a cloudless sky, a dimming 




Time Telling in the *'Land Between the Rivers" 

The Chaldean priests in ancient Mesopotamia told time by the 
stars, thus combining science with religion. 



Ti rtugh the Ages 

the othc ..cause the movements of'the-earth, 

which .^.iit and day and the changes of the sea- 

^^ .. vjpreme court of time, our final standard for 

^. arement. And since we cannot see the earth move, 

, , adge of its motion by the apparent movement of the 
heavenly bodies, just as we realize the movement of a 
train by watching the landscape rush past us as we go.^/ 

Some of the great Greek scientists, by the way, had 
even learned to foretell eclipses of the sun. According to 
Herodotus the one which occurred on May 28th, in the 
year 585 B. C, was predicted by Thales of Miletus, one of 
the famous "Seven Wise Men.*' This event was also cele- 
brated because of another interesting association; it 
stopped a battle between the armies of the Medes and the 
Lydians. Perhaps we can guess at what happened. Un- 
doubtedly the eclipse was interpreted by the armies as a 
sign of divine anger, for the ancients identified many of the 
forces and objects of nature as gods, and Phoebus Apollo, 
who it was believed daily drove his flaming chariot across 
the sky, was the great divinity of the sun. Furthermore, 
these gods were very apt to meddle with happenings upon 
the earth, particularly with wars, as anyone who has read 
the "Iliad'^ will recall 

Imagine, then, the two armies about to go to battle when 
suddenly something appeared to go wrong with the sun. 
There to their amazement, in a cloudless sky, a dimming 

**8^HVlM 3HT ^33WT39 Q^Ad*^ 3HT MI OMIJJsT 3MlT 



^he Land Between the Rivers 

shadow touched the edge of the sun's shining disk and 
began slowly to blot it out. The warriors forgot to fight 
each other and stared in terror at the sky. The sun 
dwindled to a crescent; a weird twilight fell upon the 
earth. Finally, the last thread of brightness disappeared 
leaving a dull circle in the sky, surrounded by faint bands 
of light. The gloom of night fell upon the ground. Birds 
and animals went to their rest. 

No further evidence was needed by the superstitious and 
frightened soldiers. It must be true that Phoebus Apollo 
was grievously angered, and they forthwith laid down their 
arms. The sun god, of course, soon showed his approval of 
this action by coming back into the sky. 

This is only one of many tales which might be told to 
show the state of superstition in those days. Learning, 
then, was confined to the few, and in many instances 
was used to mystify or terrorize the mass of the people 
and thus keep them submissive. At best, new ideas were 
slow to grow or to be believed. 

For example, Pythagorus, the great Greek philosopher 
of the sixth century B, C, believed the earth to be a globe, 
but it was not until Columbus discovered America — 
twenty centuries later — that people generally began to 
know that it was not flat. Even in these modem days of the 
public school, the press, the telephone, the telegraph, the 
wireless and other means for the wide-spread distribution 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

of knowledge, how slowly does truth find its way to ac- 
ceptance ! To this day, superstition is by no means dead. 

Even Mark Twain, who scoffed at superstition all his 
life, often said that, as he came into the world with Halley's 
Comet, in the year 1835, so he expected to die in 1910, the 
year of the comet's next appearance. Strangely enough, his 
half-jesting prophecy was fulfilled, for he really did die in 
that year. 

Astronomers to-day can figure out in advance what is 
to happen in the heavens with an exactness which would 
have seemed magical in olden times, and is hardly less 
astonishing even now. Their power is largely due to im- 
proved scientific instruments, proficiency in mathematics 
and greater accuracy in the measurement of time. Not only 
is the date of an eclipse of the sun now known in advance, 
but so also is the exact path of the shadow across the world, 
and the instant of its appearance in any given place. 

We now have glanced briefly at a few of the features 
of early humanity's dependence upon the clocks of nature 
and the way in which they influenced its manner of life. 
We still depend upon these great primeval timepieces and 
we do it for the most part unconsciously, for our master 
clocks must still be set by the motion of the heavenly 
bodies. 

That motion, which now we know to be really the revo- 
lution of our earth, is still the legislator and supreme court 



^he Land Between the Rivers 

of time. But we have learned to make and carry every- 
where a wonderful machine, whose revolving wheels and 
pointing hands keep tryst with the stars in the heavens and 
move to the rhythm of wheeling worlds. And so familiar is 
this talisman of man's making, that we forget to look be- 
yond it or think of time at all save as the position of the 
hands upon the dial. 

We carry with us carelessly a toy which tells tales upon 
the solar system — our watch is a pocket universe. 



*e3SB- 



CHAPTER THREE 

How <^3(Can "Began to ^^Model 
^After 3\(ature 

WE NOW have reached a point far ahead of our 
story and must take a backward step. We have 
been seeing man as a mere observer of nature; 
but man doesn't stop with nature as he finds it — his 
man-brain drives him forward; he must make improve- 
ments of his own. Animals may five and die and leave 
no trace save their bones, which for the most part soon 
disappear, but man always leaves traces behind him. He 
has always interfered with nature, or rather has modeled 
after nature, seeing in her work the revelations of princi- 
ples and laws^that he might utilize in varying ways for his 
own benefit and progress. Our material civilization is built 
up from the accumulated results of all this study and con- 
trol of nature by hundreds of millions of busy brains and 
hands, through tens of thousands of years. 

Here we are, then, living, in a sense on the top of the 
ages of human history, like the dwellers on a coral island. 
Hundreds of generations have toiled to raise the vast 
structure for us, like the little coral "polyps" which build 
their own lives into the mass, yet we take it all as a matter 



How Man Began to Model After Nature 

of course and rarely give a thought to the marvelous ways 
by which it has come about. You may have just glanced at 
your watch. To you, perhaps, a watch has always seemed 
merely a small mechanism which was bought in a store. 
That is true, and yet — remember this — the first manufac- 
turer who had a hand in producing that watch for you, 
may have been a caveman. 

In order to appreciate this development, let us return, 
therefore, for another rapid view of prehistoric times; life 
in its crudest form — one day much like another — a scanty 
population, huddled in little groups in places naturally 
sheltered — the simplest physical needs to be provided for 
— little thought of the past or care for the future — time- 
reckoning reduced to the single thought of appointment — 
no reason for measuring intervals — in these and other re- 
spects antiquity presented the greatest possible contrast to 
our complicated modem life. 

The long-armed man of our first chapter noticed that as 
the sun moved, the shadows* of the cliff also moved, as did 
all other shadows. As he formed habits of regularity, it was 
natural for him to perform a certain daily act when, per- 
haps, the shadow of a certain tree touched upon a certain 
stone. This would be a natural sun-dial. 

But a thinner, sharper shadow would be easier to ob- 
serve; suppose, therefore, that some successor to the long- 
armed man set up a pole in some open space and laid a 



^Time I'elling 'Through the Ages 

stone to mark the spot where the shadow fell when the sun 
was highest in the heavens. That would be an artificial sun- 
dial — a device deliberately -planned to accomplish a certain 
purpose. The man who first took such a step was probably 
the first manufacturer who had a hand in supplying you 
with your watch. The shaggy mammoth, the terrible 
saber-tooth tiger and the eohippus, the small ancestor of 
our modern horse, must have been familiar sights when 
time-recording at the hands of some rude, unconscious 
inventor thus began the long story of its development. 

One stone reached by the moving shadow would mark 
only one point of time each day. Why not place two stones, 
three stones, or even more and get more markings ? Such a 
procedure would be more useful because it would indicate 
the time of other happenings in the course of the day. The 
sun would pass across the skies and the shadow must travel 
around the pole. What more natural than to place the 
stones in a circle and get a series of these markings ? 

Of course, as the ages passed, life became more complex 
— not complex as we would consider it to-day, but, as com- 
pared with its rude beginnings. New habits were formed, 
new needs developed, new activities were undertaken at 
different periods. 

Here, then, was the sprouting of modem civilization — 
the beginning of that specializing of each man in his own 
particular direction that has carried the world to its pres- 



How Man Began to Model After Nature 

ent high state of expertness in so many fields. Slowly 
steadily, and inevitably this principle of specialization has 
been developed. With the increase of laws, for example, 
certain men came to give them special study and then to 
sell their knowledge and skill to other men who had no 
opportunity for such study. In course of time, the aggrega- 
tion of laws became so great that these lawyers were forced 
to specialize among themselves; to-day, therefore, we find 
a number of classes of law specialists. The same thing is 
true of doctors who have limited their practise until we 
find those who treat the eye only, or the lungs, the stom- 
ach, or the teeth. Even the treatment of the teeth has been 
subdivided, some dentists limiting themselves to extrac- 
tion and some of them even to the treatment of a sinsle 
disease of the gums. 

Engineering, too, has branched like a tree and the 
branches have branched again and yet again. Electrical 
engineering has come to be divided into so many depart- 
ments that telephone companies employ specialists in 
many branches of the engineering profession. 

We find the same conditions in any field of thought or 
activity — all commercial and industrial life is divided and 
subdivided; labor is specialized; writing is specialized; 
teaching is specialized; even warfare has become a contest 
between many kinds of trained specialists, each employing 
the tools of his trade; and every man's outlook upon life is 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

directed chiefly toward the particular corner of the partic- 
ular field that he has fitted himself to occupy. 

The first step toward this complex condition of the 
modern world was taken when each man stopped getting 
his own food, making his own weapons, and providing for 
all his individual wants without dependence upon others. 
When he learned to exchange that which he could best 
produce for that which some other man had learned to 
make better than he, the human race unconsciously turned 
away from the status of the birds and the beasts and began 
the long, slow upward climb that history records. 

It was, then, through trade, barter and exchange that 
man began to acquire the manners of civilized life. Trade 
itself became a specialized activity, and dealers who did 
nothing but buy and sell, but themselves produced no 
material goods, found that a special calling was rightfully 
theirs. The modern merchant is the heir of one of the first 
"specialists" in human activity, and the misunderstood 
work of the so-called "middleman" is one of the bases of 
modem civilization — a necessary and honorable calling. 

Civilization is a thing of the spirit, but it has the support 
of material things and it has been truly said that the de- 
gree of a people's civilization can be measured by the 
multiplicity of its needs. The savage is content with food, 
shelter and a covering for his body, but every step in 
civilization's progress has a more and more complex ma- 




The First Recorded Sun Dial 

The ''Dial of Ahaz" was probably a flight of curving steps 
upon which a beam of sunlight fell. See Isaiah, xxxviii. 



v,^' i/irough the Aj ■ 

.rd the particular corner of the partic- 

'. he has fitted himself to occupy. 

:step toward this complex condition of the 

• n world was taken when each man stopped getting 

his own food, making his own weapons, and providing for 

all his individual wants without dependence upon others. 

When he learned to exchange that which he could best 

produce for that which some other man had learned to 

make better than he, the human race unconsciously turned 

away from the status of the birds and the beasts and began 

the long, slow upward climb that history records. 

It was, then, through trade, barte' that 

man began to acquire the manners rade 

itself became a specialized activit o did 

nothing but buy and sell, bir es produced no 

material goods, found that a special calling was rightfully 
theirs. The modem merchant is the heir of one of the first 
"specialists" in human activity, and the misunderstood 
work of the so-called '^middleman" is one of the bases of 
ni ivjlization — a necessary and honorable calHng. 

Ci 'le spirit, but it has the support 

of material tilings and it ha^- been truly said tr.:{ the de- 
gree of a people's civilization can be measured by the 
multiplicity of its needs. The savage is content with food, 
shelter and a covering for his body, but ever^' step i» 
civilization's progress has a more and more complex ma- 

jAiQ Mu2 ana^Oeiail thhi'^I hhT 



How Man Began to Model After Nature 

terial accompaniment, and these interwoven relationships 
of modem Hfe in which the question of time is a most im- 
portant factor can only be sustained through the use of 
accurate time-measure. In other words, modem civiliza- 
tion leans upon the watch. 

But here again we have run somewhat ahead of our story 
which, as a matter of fact, had only reached the point of 
primitive sun-dials. But this anticipation will be excused 
because of the importance of emphasizing that the growing 
interdependence of human relations had made it necessary 
to take into account the convenience of a greater and 
greater number of people, and this involved closer and 
closer time-recording in smaller divisions of time by more 
exact methods. 

The sun-dial underwent so many changes that a volume 
would be needed to describe them all. For example, it was 
found that the shadow of an upright stick or stone varied 
from day to day, because, as we have already noticed, the 
sun rises farther north in summer in the northern hemis- 
phere than it does in winter. So the mark for a certain hour 
would change as the season changed, and the dial would 
not indicate time accurately. 

Berosus, a Chaldean historian and priest of Bel, or Baal, 
a god of the old Babylonian, lived about the year 250 B. C, 
and hit upon a very ingenious way of solving this difficulty. 
He made the dial hollow like the inside of a bowl. Into this 

•§419- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

the shadow was cast by a Httle round ball or bead at the 
end of a pointer that stood horizontally out over the bowl. 

Now the sky itself is like a great bovv^l or inverted hemi- 
sphere, and, howsoever the sun moved upon it, the shadow 
would move in the same way upon the inside of the bowl or 
hemisphere. And by drawing lines in the bowl, similar to 
the lines of longitude upon the map, the hours could be 
correctly measured. The "Hemicycle of Berosus," as it was 
called, remained in use for centuries and was the favorite 
form of sun-dial all through the classic period of Greece and 
Rome. Cicero had one at his villa near Tusculum, and 
one was found, in 1762, at Pompeii. 

But the hemicycle was not easy to make unless it were 
fairly small, and, if small, it was not very easy to read. You 
can see that a shadow which traveled only a few inches in 
a whole day would move so slowly that one could hardly 
see it go. And the shadow of a round ball is not a clear 
sharp-pointed thing like the hand of a watch, whose exact 
position can be seen however small it may be. Besides, the 
ancients were not very particular about exact timekeeping. 
They had no trains to catch, and in their leisurely lives 
convenience counted for more than doing things "on the 
minute." So they still continued using the upright pointer 
which the Greeks called the gnomon, meaning "the one 
who knows." 

"Cleopatra's Needle," and other Egyptian obelisks may 

*&42 9' 



How Man Began to Model After Nature 

also have been used as huge gnomons to cast their shadows 
upon mammoth dials, for they were dedicated to the sun. 
With an object of such great size the shadow would move 
rapidly enough to be followed easily by the eye. But of 
course its motion would be irregular because of the flat sur- 
face of the dial. The word "dial," by the way, comes from 
the Latin dies meaning "day," because it determined the 
divisions of the day. 

Then there was applied the idea of making the shadow 
move over a hollow space, such as a walled courtyard, 
going down one side, across, and up the other side as the 
sun went up, across and down the sky. Sometimes light 
was used instead of shadow, the place being partially 
roofed over and a single beam of light being admitted 
through a small hole at the southern end. Men kept track 
of the motion of this beam as it touched one point after 
another during the day. 

Do you remember the miracle of the dial of Ahaz, men- 
tioned in the Bible \ Hezekiah the king was sick and desr 
pondent, and would not believe that he could ever recover 
from his illness or prevail against his enemies. So the pro- 
phet, Isaiah, in an effort to comfort the royal sufferer, 
made the shadow return backward ten degrees upon the 
dial of Ahaz, as a sign from heaven that his prophecy of the 
king's future recovery was true. You will find the story 
in Isaiah, Chapter thirty-eight. 



"Time 1'elling 'Through the Ages 

This dial of Ahaz was probably a curved flight of steps 
rising like the side of a huge bowl at one end of the palace 
courtyard, with either a shadow cast by a pointer over- 
head or a beam of light admitted through an opening. It 
can be seen that this and similar great dials were applica- 
tions of the hemicycle idea on a large scale. 

According to our chronology, the dial of Ahaz must have 
been built during the eighth century, B. C. Although the 
sun-dial period was, of course, many hundreds of years 
older than this, yet the story of this Hebrew king and pro- 
phet is the first authentic reference to a sun-dial which has 
been discovered. 

However, the final improvement of the dial was made 
when it was discovered that by slanting the pointer, or 
gnomon, exactly toward the north pole of the sky — the 
point where the north star appears at night — the sun's 
shadow could be cast upon a flat surface with accurate 
results in indicating time. 

This may sound simple, but if you will look at a sun-dial 
such as may still be found in gardens, you will see that the 
lines of the hours and minutes are laid out on certain care- 
fully calculated angles; you will realize that people had to 
acquire considerable knowledge before they were capable 
of making such calculations. The whole subject of dial- 
making is so complicated that, in 1612, there was published 
a big book of eight hundred pages on the subject. 



How Man Began to Model After Nature 

The angles of the Hnes of the sun-dial must be different 
for different latitudes. It took that strong-arm race of an- 
cient times, the Romans, a hundred years to learn this 
fact. The Romans, at this time, were developing their 
civilization from the shoulders downward, while the 
Greeks and some of the Greek colonies developed theirs 
from the shoulders upward. Rome was a burly power, with 
powerful military muscles. Whatever it wanted it went out 
and took at the point of the sword, as some nations have 
endeavored to do in latter days. Thus, the city of Rome 
became a vast storehouse of miscellaneous loot — the fruit 
of other men's brains and hands. 

Some conqueror of that day took back with him a sun- 
dial from the Greek colony of Sicily. This was set up in 
Rome, where nobody realized that even the power of 
Rome's armies was not able to transplant the angle of the 
sun as it shone upon Sicily far to the southward. It was 
nearly one hundred years before these self-satisfied robbers 
found that they had been getting the wrong time-record 
from the stolen instrument. Thus, the original owners had 
a form of belated revenge, could they but have known it. 

One of the largest of all the sun-dials was the one set .^ 
up by the Roman Emperor Augustus when he returned 
from his Egyptian wars bringing with him an obelisk not 
unlike the one which now stands near the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art in Central Park, New York City. If you 



*&4S 



-Q* 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

can imagine this Egyptian obelisk, with its strange hiero- 
glyphic characters upon its four sides, surrounded by a 
great dial with the figures of the hours marked upon its 
surface, you will get an idea of the size of this huge time- 
piece. However, it was probably more picturesque than 
valuable as a time-keeper. 

There is an important difference between clocks and 
sun-dials, aside from the self-evident one of the difference 
in their construction. Clock-time is based on what is called 
''mean time." If we study the almanac table of times of 
sunrises and sunsets, and count the number of hours from 
sunrise of one day to sunrise of the next, we find it is rarely 
exactly twenty-four hours, but usually a few minutes more 
or less, while the average for the whole year is twenty-four 
hours. The clock is constructed to keep uniform time based 
on this average length of day. 

The sun-dial time marks "apparent time," the actual 
varying length of each day. The sun-dial time, therefore, is 
nearly always some minutes ahead or behind that of a 
clock, the greatest discrepancy being about sixteen min- 
utes for a few days in November. There are, however, four 
days in the year when the clock and the sun-dial agree per- 
fectly in the time they indicate. These days are April 15th, 
June 15th, September 1st, and December 24th. 

When in the eighteenth century clocks and watches be- 
gan to come into wide-spread use sun-dials fell into neglect, 

-§469- 



How Man Began to Model After Nature 

except as an appropriate bit of ornament in gardens. At 
Castletown, in the Isle of Man, is a remarkable sun-dial 
with thirteen faces, dating from 1720. 

It was usual to place on sun-dials appropriate mottoes 
expressing a sentiment exciting inspiration or giving a 
warning to better living. A dial that used to be at Paul's 
Cross, London, bore an inscription in Latin, which trans- 
lated means, "I count none but the sunny hours." In an old 
sweet-scented garden in Sussex was a sun-dial with a plate 
bearing four mottoes, each for its own season: **After 
darkness, light;" "Alas, how swift;" "I wait whilst I 
move;" ''So passes life." Sometimes short familiar prov- 
erbs were used like: "All things do wax and wane;" "The 
longest day must end;" "Make hay while the sun shines." 

It is told of Lord Bacon, that, without intending to do 
so, he furnished the motto borne by a dial that stood in the 
old Temple Gardens in London. A young student was sent 
to him for a suggestion for the motto of the dial, then being 
built. His lordship was busy at work in his rooms when the 
messenger humbly and respectfully made his request. 
There was no answer, A second request met with equally 
oppressive silence and seeming ignorance of even the ex- 
istence of the speaker. At last, when the petitioner ven- 
tured a third attack on the attention of the venerable 
chancellor, Bacon looked up and said sharply: *' Sirrah, be 
gone about your business.^' "A thousand thanks, my lord," 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

was the unexpected reply, "The very thing for the dial ! 
Nothing could be better." 

We see that the principle of the sun-dial has been recog- 
nized and utilized for many centuries; indeed, we still find 
sun-dials placed in gardens and parks although we rarely 
take the trouble to look to them for the time. Like the 
dinosaur and the saber-toothed tiger, they have had their 
day. They have been forced to give way to devices that 
overcame some of their objections; therefore we must not 
linger too long upon what is, after all, a closed chapter in 
the history of time-recording. 



-e48s- 




CHAPTER FOUR 

"Telling Time by the TVater-Thief 

"OW we must take another backward step of 
thousands of years. In considering the subject of 
time-recording, it seems necessary to wear a pair 
of mental seven-league boots, for we must often pass back 
and forth over great periods at single strides. While men 
were still improving the sun-dial, its disadvantages were 
already recognized and search was being made for some 
other means of telling time. 

Suppose, for example, that one had only a sun-dial 
about the house; how would one be able to tell time after 
sunset or on a dark day? How would one know the hour if 
he were surrounded by tall buildings or a thick growth of 
trees ? And it might be very necessary to tell time under 
any of these conditions. 

Then, again, merely as a question of accuracy, the sun- 
dial was not always reliable. It would get badly out of the 
way if used by travelers, since different markings were 
needed for different latitudes. While on shipboard the mo- 
tion of the waves would cause the shadow to swing around 
in the most bewildering manner. Even under ideal condi- 
tions it was never absolutely exact, because the apparent 

-§49^ 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

motion of our steady-gaited old sun is not quite as de- 
pendable as most of us imagine. 

Astronomers find that they must allow for what they 
call "equation of time" in order to make their calculations 
come out true. The question need not be discussed at this 
point, but it can be seen that, as humanity left its earliest 
care-free days and began to get busy, and hurried and 
anxious over its affairs, it came to feel that after all the 
sun-dial was not altogether sufficient for its needs. 

For this reason we are now taking a third big backward 
step, returning, this time, not to the caveman but to an- 
cient Babylon and Egypt, probably not less than twenty- 
seven hundred years ago and possibly much longer. In this 
way we meet the clepsydra. 

The clepsydra was an interesting instrument, and it had 
an interesting name, which meant the *'thief of water'* and 
came from two Greek words meaning "thief" and "water"; 
you can trace this in our words "kleptomaniac" and 
"hydrant." We shall now examine a timepiece that was 
much more nearly a machine than was the simple shade- 
casting sun-dial. 

The original idea was simple enough. At first, it was 
merely that of a vessel of water, having a small hole in the 
bottom, so that the liquid dripped out drop by drop. As 
the level within the jar was lowered, it showed the time 
upon a scale. Thus, if the hole were so small and the vessel 



'Telling 'Time by the "JVater-Thief^ 

were so large that it would require twenty-four hours for 
the water to drip away at an absolutely steady rate, it may 
be seen that the side of the vessel might easily have been 
marked with twenty-four divisions to indicate the hours. 
It may also be seen that the water would drip as rapidly at 
night or in shadow as in sunlight. And the clepsydra could 
be used indoors, which the sun-dial could not, although it 
required attention in that it must be regularly refilled and 
the orifice must always be kept completely open, because 
the slightest stoppage would retard the rate of dripping 
and the "clock" would run slow. 

The sun, which, with the other heavenly bodies, had 
therefore been the sole reliance of the human race in its 
time-reckoning could now be ignored and the would-be 
timekeeper called to his aid another mighty servant from 
the forces of nature — that of gravitation. 

The most interesting human fact, however, about the 
clepsydra is that it involved an entirely different concep- 
tion of the marking of time. Now it was not so much a 
question of when as of hozu long. A good sun-dial set in a 
proper position would always indicate three o'clock when 
it was three o'clock, but the clepsydra might do no such 
thing. It would merely show how many hours had elapsed 
since last it was filled, and the steady drip, drip, drip of the 
escaping water could — and did — lower the surface quite 
as evenly at one time of day as at another. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

We have already seen that the first purpose in marking 
time was merely for making appointments, but the clepsy- 
dra shows that, with its invention, mankind had already 
made some progress toward a new point of view. One im- 
portant factor in this change was the very practical need 
of telling time at night, in stormy weather, or indoors, 
where the sun-dial could not be used. The clepsydra, on 
the other hand, worked equally well at any hour or place, 
and in all sorts of weather. 

Nevertheless, it, too, proved to have certain faults. 
After a time, people noticed the interesting fact that water 
ran faster from a full vessel than from one which was 
nearly empty; this was, of course, because of the greater 
pressure. Since such a variation interfered with calcula- 
tions, they hit upon the idea of a double vessel; the larger 
one below containing a float which rose as the vessel filled, 
thus marking the hours upon the scale, and the smaller one 
above, the one from which the water dripped, being kept 
constantly filled to the point of overflow. 

This improved form of clepsydra opened a field of fas- 
cinating possibilities in time-recording — it gave the chance 
to make use of a machine. There is, perhaps, no more inter- 
esting point in studying human development than to see 
the steady, inevitable way in which mankind from its cave- 
dwelling days has tended toward machinery. Roughly, 
this progress may be characterized as of three stages. 



'Telling Time by the "Water-Thief 

First. Primitive man — an upright-standing animal, 
naked, unarmed, weak as compared with some creatures, 
slow as compared with others, clumsy as compared with 
still others — a creature with many physical disadvantages, 
but with the best brain in the animal kingdom. 

Second. The tool-using man, who had begun to grasp 
weapons and to fashion implements, thus supplementing 
his natural abilities by artificial means. 

Third. The machine-making man, who has fashioned to 
himself a mechanical **body" of incredible powers — that is 
to say, he has learned to intensify his own powers through 
artificial means which he has invented, as when he made 
the telescope to give himself greater vision; he has made 
inventions by means of which he can outrun the antelopes, 
outfly the birds, outswim the fishes, outgaze the eagles, 
and overmatch the elephants in sheer physical force — he 
can turn night into day, can send his voice across the 
continent, can strike crushing blows at a distance of many 
miles and can carry the movements of the stars in his 
pocket. Some phases of this third stage were foreshadowed 
when man first applied wheels and pulleys to his clepsydra. 

Here, then, was water steadily raised or lowered by 
means of uniform dropping; here was a float whose motion 
was controlled by that of the water; here, in fact, was 
water-power with a means for applying it. Attach a cord 
to the float, cause it to turn a wheel by use of the pulley- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

principle, and the motion of the wheel would indicate the 
time. Still better, rig up a turning-pointer, increase its 
speed through the use of toothed gear-wheels, place it in 
front of a stationary disk divided to indicate the hours, 
and now the apparatus looked not unlike a modern clock. 
Or attach a bell and let it be caused to ring at a certain 

point in the motion— what 
was that but an alarm- 
clock.? Ctesibus of Alex- 
andra was the one who is 
believed first to have ap- 
plied the toothed wheels 
to the clepsydra and this 
was about 140 B.C. 

Clepsydrae were expen- 
sive of course; accurate 
mechanical work was 
never cheap until modern 
times. Cunning crafts- 
men spent their time up- 
on costly decorations, and these water-clocks became 
triumphs of the jeweler's art, a gift for kings. Therefore, 
like the sun-dial, they drifted into Rome — that vast mael- 
strom of the ancient world. Imagine a great walled city 
of low flat-roofed buildings, with fronts and porches of 
great columns, a town mostly of stone and much of it of 




'&54S- 



I'elHng 'Time by the '^Water-Thief* 



marble, gleaming white 
under the bright Italian 
sun, the streets thronged 
with men in tunics and 
togas and here and there 
some person of import- 
ance driving by, standing 
erect in his chariot drawn 
by four horses harnessed 
abreast. And statues 
everywhere, in the streets 
and about the buildings 
and in cool courtyards 
and gardens among green 
leaves. The ancients 
thought of sculpture as 
an outdoor thing, and 
where we have one statue in the streets or public places of 
our cities, they had a hundred. We treasure the remains of 
them as artistic wonders in our museums, but they put 
them indoors and out as common ornaments, and lived 
among them. 

Presently we hear of the clepsydra being used in Roman 
law courts by command of Pompey, to limit the time of 
speakers. ''This," says one writer of the day, "was to 
prevent babblings, that such as spoke ought to be brief 




^SS^ 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

in their speeches." It is not difficult to picture some pom- 
s pons and tiresome togaed advocate, rolUng out sonorous 
Latin syllables as he cites precedents and builds up 
arguments, while an unseen dropping checks the time 
against him, and to hear his indignant surprise — and the 
chuckles of his auditors — ^when the relentless water-clock 
cuts him short in the middle of some period. Martial, the 
Latin poet, referring to a tiresome speaker who repeated- 
ly moistened his throat from a glass of water during the 
lengthy speech, suggested that it would be an equal relief 
to him and to his audience, if he were to drink from the 
clepsydra. But Roman lawyers were not guileless, and 
sometimes, so we are told, they tampered with the 
mechanical regulation or else introduced muddy water,, 
which would run out more slowly. 

This suggests one of the difficulties of the clepsydra. 
Still more serious was the fact that it would freeze on 
frosty nights. There were no Pearys among the ancient 
Romans; polar exploration interested them not at all; but 
they did spread their conquests into regions of colder 
weather — as when Julius Caesar mentions using the clep- 
sydra to regulate the length of the night-watches in Brit- 
ain. His keen mind noted by this means that the summer 
nights in Britain were shorter than those at Rome, a fact 
now known to be due to difference of latitude. 

As late as the ninth century, a clepsydra was regarded as 

-§56^ 



'Telling Time by the *^ Water-Thief" 

a princely gift. It is said, that the good caliph, Harun-al- 
Raschid, beloved by all readers of the "Arabian Nights," 
sent one of great beauty to Charlemagne, the Emperor of 
the West. Its case was elaborate, and, at the stroke of each 
hour, small doors opened to give passage to cavaliers. 
After the twelfth hour these cavaliers retired into the case. 
The striking apparatus consisted of small balls which 
dropped into a resounding basin underneath. 

The clepsydra appears to have been used throughout the 
Middle Ages in some European countries, and it lingered 
along in Italy and France down to the close of the fifteenth 
century. Some of these water-clocks were plain tin tubes; 
some were hollow cups, each with a tiny hole at the bot- 
tom, which were placed in water and gradually filled and 
sank in a definite space of time. 

When the clepsydra was introduced from Egypt into 
Greece, and later into Rome, one was considered enough 
for each town and was set in the market-place or some 
public square. It was carefully guarded by a civic officer, 
who religiously filled it at stated times. The nobility of the 
town and the wealthy people sent their servants to find out 
the exact time, while the poorer inhabitants were informed 
occasionally by the sound of the horn which was blown by 
the attendant of the clepsydra to denote the hour of 
changing the guard. This was much in the spirit of the 
calls of the watchmen in old England, and later in our New 



Ti'ime 'Telling Through the Ages 

England, who were, in a way, walking clocks that shouted 
"Eleven o'clock and all's well," or whatever might be the 
hour. 

Allowing for the fact that the clepsydra was none too 
accurate at the best and that its reservoir must occasion- 
ally be refilled, it can be seen that this, early form of time- 
piece, having played its part, wa? ready to step off the 
stage when a more practical successor should arrive. , /| 

With one of its earliest successors we are familiar. 



i 



-6585* 




CHAPTER FIVE 

How Father 'Time Got His Hour-Glass 

VERY now and then one sees a picture of a lean 
old gentleman, with a long white beard, flowing 
robes, and an expression of most misleading 
benignity. In spite of his look of kindly good humor, he 
is none too popular with the human race and his methods 
are not always of the gentlest. In one hand he carries the 
familiar scythe, and, in the other, the even more familiar 
hour-glass. By this we may assume that he began to be 
pictured in this way while the hour-glass was still in com- 
mon use. 

The principle of the hour-glass is so similar to that of the 
clepsydra, and its first use was so early, that it is somewhat 
of a misnomer to speak of it as a successor. About the only 
justification that can be made is that the clepsydra has 
long disappeared, while the sand-glass — if not the hour- 
glass — is still sold in the stores for such familiar uses as 
timing the boiling of eggs, the length of telephone-conver- 
sations, and other short-time needs. 

Nothing could be much simpler than the hour-glass, in 
which fine sand poured through a tiny hole from an upper 
into a lower compartment. It had none of the mechanical 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

features of the later clepsydrae; it did not adjust itself to 
astronomical laws like the perfected sun-dials; it merely 
permitted a steady stream of fine sand to pass through an 
opening at a uniform rate of speed, until one of the funnel- 
shaped bowls had emptied itself — then waited with entire 
unconcern until some one stood it upon its head and caused 
the sand to run back again. 

However, it possessed some very solid advantages of its 
own. It would not freeze; it would not spill over; it did not 
need refilling; it would run at a steady rate whether the 
reservoir were full or nearly empty; it could be made very 
cheaply, and there was nothing about it to wear out. 

A water-clock might be of considerable size but a sand- 
clock, since it required turning, must be kept small, and 
an hour-glass — a size small enough to carry — became pop- 
ular, although its use was correspondingly limited. Thus, 
it naturally was assigned to Father Time to be carried 
before watches were available. A sun-dial simply would not 
answer this purpose, since the old gentleman works by 
night as steadily as by day. 

How old is the sand-glass .? 

We do not know definitely, but it is said to have been 
invented at Alexandria about the middle of the third cen- 
tury B. C. That it was known in ancient Athens is certain, 
for a Greek bas-relief at the Mattei Palace in Rome, repre- 
senting a marriage, shows Morpheus, the god of dreams, 

*&6oB* 



Hozv Father 'Time Got His Hour-Glass 

holding an hour-glass. The Athenians used to carry these 
timepieces as we do our watches. 

Some hour-glasses contained mercury, but sand was an 
ideal substance, for, when fine and dry, it flows with an 
approximately constant speed whether the quantity is 
great or small, whereas, liquids descend more swiftly the 
greater the pressure above the opening. 

Hour-glasses were introduced into churches in the early 
sixteenth century when the preachers were famous for their 
wearisome sermons. The story is told of one of these long- 
winded divines who, on a hot day, had reached his 
*'tenthly" just as the restless congregation were gladdened 
to see the last grains of sand fall from the upper bowl. 
"Brethren," he remarked; "Let us take another glass," and 
he reversed it — "Ahem, as I was saying — " And he went on 
for another hour. 

Other preachers, more merciful, used a half-hour glass 
and kept within its limits. Many churches were furnished 
with ornamental stands to hold the glass. These time- 
keepers lingered along in country churches for many 
years, but ceased to be in anything like general demand 
after about 1650. 

For rough purposes of keeping time on board ship, sand- 
glasses were employed and it is curious to note that hour 
and half-hour glasses were used for this purpose in the 
British navy as recently as the year 1839. 

'€■615- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

The very baby of the hour-glass family was a twenty- 
eight second affair which assisted in determining the speed 
of the vessel. The log-line was divided by knots, at in- 
tervals of forty-seven feet, three inches, and this distance 
would go into a nautical mile as many times as twenty- 
eight seconds would go into an hour. When the line was 
thrown overboard the mariner counted the number of 
knots slipping through his fingers while his eyes were fixed 
on the tiny emptying sand-glass, and in this way so many 
"knots" an hour denoted the ship's speed in miles. 

In the British House of Commons, even at the present 
time, a two-minute glass is used in the preliminary to a 
"division," which is a method of voting wherein the mem- 
bers leave their seats and go into either the affirmative or 
negative lobbies. While the sand is running, "division- 
bells" are set in motion in every part of the building to give 
members notice that a "division" is at hand. 

It was an ancient custom to put an hour-glass, as an 
emblem that the sands of life had run out, into coffins at 
burials. 

Another early means of recording time applied the prin- 
ciple of the consumption of some slow-burning fuel by fire. 
From remote ages, the Chinese and Japanese thus used 
ropes, knotted at regular intervals, or cylinders of glue and 
sawdust marked in rings, which slowly smoldered away. 
Alfred the Great, that noble English king of the ninth 



How Father 'Time Got His Hour-Glass 

century, is said to have invented the candle-clock, because 
of a vow to give eight hours of the day to acts of religion, 
eight hours to public affairs, and eight hours to rest and 
recreation. He had six tapers made, each twelve inches 
long and divided into twelve parts, or inches, colored 
alternately black and white. Three of these parts were 
burned in one hour, making each inch represent twenty 
minutes, so that his six candles, lighted one after the other 
by his chaplains, would burn for twenty-four hours. 

The Eskimos also, through the long arctic night have 
watched the lamp which gives both light and heat to their 
cold huts of snow. But all these are no more than crude 
conveniences, whose irregularity is evident, and there is 
likewise no need to do more than call attention to the effect 
upon fire in any form, of wind or dampness in the air. 
The Roman lamp-clock sheltered from the weather was the 
best of them all, and was the only one which long con- 
tinued in civilized use. 

Our chief interest in all such devices comes from the 
touch of poetry still remaining in the tradition of the sa- 
cred flame which must be kept forever burning, and in 
association of life and time with fire, in such parables as 
that of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. There is a reminder 
of this old time-keeping by fire in all that poetry and 
philosophy which tells of hope that still may live or of 
deedsthat maybe done,* 'while the lamp holds out to burn.'* 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

Thus far, in spite of occasional glimpses of the Middle 
Ages and of modem times, we have dealt, for the most 
part, with earlier ages. Now our story must leave these 
behind, and thus passes the ancient world with its strange 
pagan civilization which was so human, so wise and so 
simple. It is difficult for modern Americans even to imagine 
existence in ancient Greece or Rome or in still more an- 
cient Egypt and Mesopotamia — since the whole attitude 
toward life was so essentially different from what it is 
to-day. 

Our debt to the ancients in this one matter of recording 
time is typical of that in many others. To them we owe our 
whole fundamental system and conception of it from the 
astronomy by which we measure our years and our seasons 
and make our appeal to the final standard of the stars, 
down to the arithmetic of our minutes and seconds and the 
very names of our months and days. 

In the modern application and practical use of all this, 
on the other hand, we owe them nothing. They never made 
a clock or watch, or any like device which has more than 
a merely ornamental use to-day. They gave us the general 
plan so well that we have never bettered it, but they left 
later generations to work out the details. They invented 
the second as a division of time but they did not measure 
by it. They did not care to try. For them, learning was the 
natural right and power of the few, and the gulf between 



Flow Father 'Time Got His Hour-Glass 

the most that was known by the few and the httle that was 
known in general, was Hke the gulf between great wealth 
and great poverty among ourselves. 

Indeed, in this age of teaching and preaching, when a 
thought seems to need only to be born in order to be spread 
abroad over the world, it is hard for us even to conceive 
the instinct by which men kept their learning like a secret 
among the initiated and felt no impulse to make known 
that which they knew. 

Their great men thought and did wonderful things which 
are now the common property of us all. And their common 
folk lived in a fashion astonishingly primitive by compari- 
son, in an ignorance which certainly was weakness and may 
somehow have been bliss. 

That world of theirs is gone — the body and the spirit of 
it alike. And there remains to us, along with much of their 
art and their science, the hour-glass to symbolize that re- 
lentless flight of time which they feared but never tried to 
save; and the quaint sun-dial in our gardens, a memory of 
that worldly-wise old philosophy which counted only the 
shining hours. 



•065 9* 




CHAPTER SIX 

The Clocks Which ^l\(amed Themselves 

OW the scene changes again, and the story 
shifts forward over the interval of a thousand 
years. As we take up the tale once more, we find 
ourselves in another world, amid a life as different from 
that ancient life of which we have been speaking as either 
of them is from our own life to-day. 

The ancient civilization, which may be traced from 
Rome through Greece, Babylon and Egypt back to the 
dim dawn of history, is gone almost as if it had never been. 
For there came a period when great hordes of barbarians 
defeated the armies, burnt the cities, pillaged and destroy- 
ed, leaving only desolation and ruin behind them. Then 
followed hundreds of years of what we call the **Dark 
Ages," — ages of ignorance and violence, when mankind 
was slowly struggling upwards again and was forming a 
new civilization upon the ruins of the old. Therefore, at 
the point we have now reached, there are no more white 
temples and pillared porticos and sandaled men in white 
tunic and toga, and marble statues in green gardens; but 
ever3rwhere we find sharp roofs and towers, quaint out- 
lines, and wild color like a child's picture-book. 



ne Clocks Which Named I'hemselves 

There are castles with their moats and battlements, and 
monasteries with their cloistered arches; there are knights 
in armor riding, and lords and ladies gorgeous in strange 
garments, and monks in their dull gowns, and the sturdy 
peasant working in the field; and in the towns, all among 
peaked gables and Gothic windows and rough cobbled 
streets, a motley crowd of beggar and burgher and cour- 
tier, priest and clerk, doctor and scholar and soldier and 
merchant and tradesman — an endless variety of types, 
and each in the distinctive costume of his calling. And 
there are churches everywhere, from the huge cathedral 
towering like a forest of carven stone to the humble village 
chapel or wayside shrine, their spires all pointing up to 
heaven in token of the change that has come upon the life 
and spirit of the world. 

We have come from the height of the classic period sud- 
denly into the heart of the Middle Ages; and in the dark 
centuries that lie between, Christ and His Disciples have 
come and gone, and the religion of the Western World has 
changed; the old gods have perished and the saints have 
filled their places. And Rome has died, and Romance has 
been born. 

The center of civilization has shifted to the north and 
west; from the old ring of lands around the Mediterranean 
to the great nations of modern Europe. Italy has become a 
jealous group of independent cities, great in art and com- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

merce, but in little else. Germany is much the same, except 
for the lack of some few score centuries of tradition. France 
and Spain are already great and growing. William the 
Conqueror has fought and ruled and died, and the "Merry 
England" of song and story has grown up out of the fusion 
of Saxon and Norman. Chivalry and the Crusades, the 
times of Ivanhoe and The Talisman, are as fresh as yes- 
terday. 

And by green hedgerows and hospitable inns, Chaucer's 
Pilgrims are plodding onward toward the sound of Canter- 
bury's bells. For here is the point of all our seeking — that 
there are clocks now in the monasteries and in the Ca- 
thedral towers. There is just one curious link of likeness 
between the Middle Ages and the remoter past; as it was 
at first at Babylon, so now in the fourteenth century the 
priesthood holds almost a monopoly of science and of 
learning. 

Thus, although the sun-dial, clepsydra and sand-glass 
are still much used, we find ourselves at last in the time and 
lands oi clocks. The very sound of the word "clock" gives a 
clue to its origin. It suggests the striking of the hour upon 
some bell. The French called the word cloche and the Sax- 
ons clugga, and both of these originally meant a bell. 

If you will put yourself back in the picture at the begin- 
ning of the chapter, you will find yourself in a realm of 
sounding, pealing, chiming bells with the hours of prayer 



The Clocks Which Named 'Themselves 

throughout the day, from matins to angelus, rung out 
from the belfries, and with frequent deep-toned strikings of 
the hour. Not even a bHnd man could have remained un- 
conscious of the passage of the hours under such condi- 
tions, and time, in a sense, became more a possession of 
democracy although timepieces themselves were still the 
mark of special privilege. 

Life also was beginning to hurry just a little. Very de- 
liberate, we should call it in comparison with the mad rush 
of the twentieth century, and yet it began to show its 
growing complexity in that humanity was becoming more 
definitely organized and men were forced to depend more 
and more upon each other. In all of this, there was a 
slightly growing sense of the things that were to be, just as 
the water for some miles above Niagara begins to hasten 
its course under the influence of the mighty cataract over 
which it will at last go madly plunging. 

Herein occurs another of those baffling questions, like 
the old-time puzzler as to whether the hen first came from 
the egg or the egg from the hen. One cannot help wonder- 
ing to what extent the increasing accuracy of the broaden- 
ing knowledge of time-keeping was the result of our compli- 
cated modern life and to what extent it was the cause. Cer- 
tainly we cannot conceive of present-day affairs as being 
conducted save in the light of moving hands and figures 
upon a dial. 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

From the Middle Ages, then, we get our word for clock 
and, which is more important, we begin to get some crude 
application of its modern mechanical principles. They were 
wonderfully skilful, those medieval workmen, considering 
the means at their disposal, and the ingenuity of some of 
their clocks is still a delight, but, perhaps, for better under- 
standing of the story, we should stop for a minute to in- 
quire exactly what a clock means from the mechanical 
point of view. 

A clock is a machine for keeping time. And for this there 
are four essentials, without any one of which there would 
be no clock. First, there must be a motive power to make it 
run; second, there must be a means of transmitting this 
power; third, there must be a regulating device to make the 
mechanism move steadily and slowly, and keep the motive 
power from running down too quickly; and, fourth, there 
must be some device to mark the time and make it known. 

In a typical modern clock the power comes from the pull 
of a weight or the pressure of a spring — although clocks 
may, of course, be operated by electricity or compressed 
air or some other means; also, the regulator is what is 
known as the "escapement" and the recording device con- 
sists of the hands, the dial, and the striking mechanism. 
Having stated this, let us return to the past and see if we 
can determine how these principles came to be applied. 

This is not altogether easy. Our forefathers were less 



'The Clocks Which Named Themselves 

particular than we over such trifling questions as names 
and speUing — even the learned Shakespeare, long after- 
ward, used several different spellings of his own name. 
Thus, when we see in the records of the period the name of 
"clock" or "horologe" we cannot tell with certainty what 
type is meant, since "horologe" meant simply a device for 
keeping time; it might have been applied equally well to a 
clock, clepsydra, an hour-glass, or even a sun-dial. 

"It is quite possible," writes M. Gubelin Breitschmidt, 
the younger, an eminent horologist of Lucerne, Switzer- 
land, "that a large number of the technical inventions of 
antiquity were lost during the migrations of the barbarians 
and under the chaotic conditions prevailing during the first 
thousand years of Christianity, but the most perfect sur- 
viving instrument for measuring time was the water-clock, 
known as the clepsydra, which was able to maintain its 
supremacy long after the appearance of the wholly me- 
chanical clock, just as the beautiful manuscripts of the 
artist monks and laymen were favored by the cultured 
classes long after the invention of movable types for 
printing. 

"The spread of Christianity throughout Europe caused 
the foundation of many religious communities, and the 
severe rules by which they were governed — fixing the hours 
of prayer, labor, and refreshment — forced their members 
to seek instruments by which to measure time. In the year 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

605, a bull of Pope Sabinianus decreed that all bells be 
rung seven times in the twenty-four hours, at fixed mo- 
ments and regularly, and these fixed times became known 
as the seven canonical hours. The sound of the bells pene- 
trated and came to regulate not only the life of the re- 
ligious bodies but also that of the secular people who lived 
outside the walls of the monasteries. Oil-lamps, candles, 
hour-glasses, prayers and — for those who had the means of 
buying them — clepsydrae served as chronometers for the 
brotherhoods; so that one can easily imagine that many 
a monk sought to improve these instruments. But as yet, 
no one had found means to regulate the wheel-system of a 
movement. In the best instruments of this period, water 
supplied the motive power and served as well to regulate 
the action." 

There is a general belief that Gerbert, the monk, who 
was the most accomplished scholar of his age, and who 
later became Pope Sylvester II, was the one who first took 
the important step of producing a real clock, and that this 
occurred near the close of the tenth century — or to be 
more exact, about 990 A. D. This period was one of densest 
superstition, and expectancy of the end of the world was in 
the air, since many people had fixed upon the year 1000 
A. D. as the date of that cataclysmic event. 

Authorities of the Church and of the state were not very 
partial to invention and research, their attention being 

♦&72 5* 




Galileo Discovering the Principle of the Pendulum 

As a youth of seventeen Galileo watched a swinging lamp, 

in the Cathedral of Pisa, timed it by his pulse, and discovered 

the principle iip07i which pendulum clocks are built. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

605, :i bull of Pope Sabinianus decreed that all bells be 
rung seven times in the twenty-four hours, at fixed mo- 
ments and regularly, and these fixed times became known 
as the seven canonical hours. The sound of the bells pene- 
trated and came to regulate not only the life of the re- 
ligious bodies but also that of the secular people who lived 
outside the walls of the monasteries. Oil-lamps, candles, 
hour-glasses, prayers and — for those who had the means of 
buying them — clepsydrae served as chronometers for the 
brotherhoods; so that one can easily imagine that many 
a monk sought to improve these instruments. But as yet, 
no one had found means to regulate the w- ' vstem of a 
movement. In the best instruo' ' ' ' i. water 

supplied the motive power • r';.^ulate 

the action." 

There is a general belief that Gerbert, the monk, who 
was the most accomplished scholar of his age, and who 
later became Pope Sylvester II, was the one who first took 
the important step of producing a real clock, and that this 
occurred near the ihse of the tenth century — or to be 
more exact, about 9' ' '"■ H . This period was one of densest 
superstition, and ex. / of the end of the world was in 

the air, since many i- - had fixed upon the year 1000 
A. D. as the date of thai cataclysmic event. 

Authorities of the Chuiv h and of the state were not very 
partial to invention and research, their ^^f^'-'+ion being 

MUJUQMH^ 3HT ^O HJqiQHIil^ ^HT OVIIilH V038lQ OHJIJaO 

t<^ma\ :gm^m^i £> \i^5\'iiavi5 o^Vi\K>0 j^'ji^U^'^^'^i \o Aiwo^ xi iK 



I 





The Clocks Which Named Themselves 

fixed largely upon theological, political, or military affairs; 
but, of course, inquiring and constructive minds were still 
to be found; even without encouragement these tended to 
follow the impulse of their natures. 

It is to the monks in their cloisters that we chiefly owe the 
preservation of learning through the "dark ages," and from 
the monks, for the most part, came such progress of science 
and invention as was made. If Gerbert, the monk, after 
patient tinkering with wheels and weights in his stone- 
walled workshop, really achieved some form of the clock- 
action as we know it, he was one of the great benefactors of 
the human race. Still, it is not impossible that his device 
may only have been a more remarkable application of the 
clepsydra principle. 

Whatever it was, it seems to have startled the authori- 
ties, for they are said to have accused him of having prac- 
ticed sorcery through league with the devil, and to have 
banished him for a time from France. His age appears to 
have had a vast respect for the intellectual powers of his 
Satanic Majesty. Anything which was too ingenious or 
scientific to be understood without an uncomfortable de- 
gree of mental application was very apt to be ascribed to 
diabolic inspiration and thus found unfit for use in "Chris- 
tian" lands. It could hardly have been a stimulating at- 
mosphere for would-be inventors. 

All of the credit that we are ascribing to Gerbert must 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

therefore be prefixed with an "if." Did he really invent the 
clock-movements, or is this merely another of the tales 
which have blown down to us from this age of tradition and 
romance ? For similar tales are told of Pacificus in 849 A. D. 
of the early Pope Sabinianus in 612 and even of Boetheus, 
the philosopher, as far back as 510 A. D., while always in 
the background are claims of priority for the Chinese who 
are supposed to have discovered many of our most im- 
portant mechanical and scientific principles away off upon 
the other side of the world before these were dreamed of in 
the west. 

If all of these various claims were true, which is far from 
likely, it still would not need to surprise us, for it must be 
remembered that humanity, until within the past few 
generations,was more or less a collection of separated units 
and its records were very incomplete. There was scant in- 
terest in abstract research and very limited intercourse 
between towns and countries; one who made an important 
discovery in one locality might be unheard of a hundred 
miles away. Unless all the conditions were favorable, his 
ideas might even pass from memory with his death, until 
some scholar of modern times might chance upon their 
record. 

All that can with certainty be said, therefore, is that 
there were clocks of some sort in the monasteries during 
the eleventh century; that back of these were the clepsy- 



^he Clocks Which Named 'Themselves 

drae and other time recording devices; and that here and 
there through the preceding centuries are more or less be- 
Hevable tales of inventions that had to do with the subject. 

Let it be remembered, too, that some of the brilliant 
minds of ancient times made discoveries that were for- 
gotten after the barbarian waves overwhelmed preceding 
civilizations. The ages following the downfall of Rome 
were those of intellectual darkness, illiteracy, and rude 
force until mankind groped slowly back toward the light 
through the process oi rediscovery. 

Thus, it mattered not at all to the medieval world that 
Archimedes, the great Greek scientist and engineer — ^who, 
however, chanced to live in the Greek colony of Sicily — 
was able, somewhere about 200 B.C., to construct a system 
of revolving spheres which reproduced the motion of the 
heavenly bodies. Such a machine must necessarily have 
involved some sort of clock-work. We dare not stop to 
consider Archimedes, lest we stray too far from our sub- 
ject, but this marvelous man of ancient times, the Benja- 
min Franklin of his day, seems to have had a hand in 
almost every sort of mechanical and scientific research, 
from discovering the principle of specific gravity, in order 
to checkmate a dishonest goldsmith, to destroying Roman 
war-ships by means of his scientific "engines." The story 
is told that he set the ships on fire by concentrating upon 
them the rays of the sun from a number of concave mir- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

rors. And, although this story may not be true, the things 
that he is known to have done are extraordinary. 

Archimedes and his knowledge had long passed away 
when the monastery clocks of the eleventh century began 
to sound the hour. These were the fruit of a crude new 
civilization just struggling for expression, and represented 
the general period when William the Conqueror led his 
Norman army into England. 



•^y^^- 



CHAPTER SEVEN 
l^he dModern 0ock and Its Qreators 

WE LEARN that toward the close of the thir- 
teenth century a clock was set up in St. Paul's 
Cathedral in London (1286); one in West- 
minster, by 1288; and one in Canterbury Cathedral, by 
1292. The Westminster clock and the chime of bells were 
put up from funds raised by a fine imposed on a chief 
justice who had offended the government. The clock 
bore , as an inscription the words of Virgil : ^'Discite 
justitiam moniti," "Learn justice from my advice," and 
the bells were gambled away by Henry VIII ! In the same 
century, Dante, whose wonderful poem the Commedia^ 
(the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise) is sometimes called 
the "Swan Song of the Middle Ages," since it marks the 
passing of the medieval times, spoke of ''wheels that 
wound their circle in an orloge." 

Chaucer speaks of a cock crowing as regularly *'as a 
clock in an abbey orloge." And this shows, curiously, the 
early meaning of the word, for by the word * 'clock," 
Chaucer evidently meant the bell which struck the hour, 
and, very obviously, he used the word "orloge" to indicate 
the clock itself. 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

Many of these ''clocks" had neither dials nor hands. They 
told time only by striking the hour. Sometimes in the great 
tower clocks there were placed automatic figures repre- 
senting men in armor or even mere grotesque figures which, 
at the right moment, beat upon the bell. These figures were 
called "jacks o' the clock" or "jacquemarts" and curious 
specimens of them are still in existence. 

The early abbey clocks did not even strike the hour but 
rang an alarm to awaken the monks for prayers. Here 
again, the alarm principle precedes the visible measure- 
ment of time; even now, as already noted, we speak of a 
"clock" by the old word for "bell." 

In the course of the following century — the fourteenth — 
clocks began to appear which were really worthy of the 
name, and of these we have authentic details. They were to 
be found in many lands. One of them was built, in 1344, by 
Giacomo Dondi at Padua, Italy. Another was constructed 
in England, in 1340, by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glas- 
tonbury. And in 1364, Henry de Wieck, De Wyck, or de 
Vick, of Wurtemburg, was sent for by Charles V, King of 
France, to come to Paris and build a clock for the tower of 
the royal palace, which is now the Palais de Justice. It was 
finished and set up in February 1379, and there it still re- 
mains after lapse of five and a half centuries, although its 
present architectural surroundings were not finished until 
a much later date. 



ne Modern Clock and Its Creators 

This venerable timepiece termed by some chroniclers 
"the parent of modern timekeepers," was still performing 
its duty as late as 1850. And so it is a matter of interesting 
record that its mechanism, which served to measure the 
passage of time in the days when the earth was generally 
believed to be flat and when the Eastern Division of the 
Roman Empire was still ruled from Byzantium, now 
Constantinople, has served the same purpose within the 
possible memory of men now living. Its bell has one grim 
association — it gave the signal for that frightful piece of 
Medicean treachery, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
planned by Catherine de Medici, the mother of the King 
Charles IX, when the armed retainers of the crown of 
France flung themselves upon the unsuspecting Hugue- 
nots and caused the streets to run red with the blood of 
men, women and children — a ghastly butchery of thou- 
sands of people. 

As we have seen, de Vick's clock was neither the earliest 
made, nor among the earliest; nor, probably, did it em- 
body any at that time new mechanical invention. It does, 
however, fairly and clearly typify the oldest style of clock 
of which we to-day have any accurate knowledge. Compare 
its description, then,with the clock upon your shelf. 

We think of the tall-cased "grandfather's clocks'* as 
antique; but this tower-clock of de Vick's outdoes them in 
antiquity by some four hundred years. And its most inter- 
ns 79 B- 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

esting feature is its curious likeness in mechanical prin- 
ciple to the clocks of modem times. Like most eady clocks, 
it has only one hand — the hour-hand. Its ponderous move- 
ment is of iron, laboriously hand-wrought; the teeth of its 
wheels and pinions were cut out one by one. It was driven 
by a weight of five hundred pounds, the cord of which was 
wound round a drum, or barrel. This barrel carried, at one 
end, a pinion, meshing with the hour-wheel, which drove 
the hands; the flange at the other end of the barrel formed 
the great wheel, or first wheel of the train. This meshed 
with a pinion on the shaft of the second wheel, and this in 
turn with a lantern-pinion upon the shaft of the escape- 
wheel. All of this is, of course, essentially the modem train 
of gears, only with fewer wheels. 

The escapement is the most important part of the whole 
mechanism, because it is the part which makes the clock 
keep time. It is an interrupter, checking the movement al- 
most as soon as, under the urge of the mainspring, it starts 
forward. The frequency and duration of these interruptions 
determines the rate of running. Without this, the move- 
ment would run down swiftly; with it, the operation 
stretches over thirty hours, involving 4:2)2,000 interruptions. 

De Vick's escapement is shown in the illustration. The 
escape-wheel was bent into the shape of a shallow pan, so 
that its toothed edge was at a right angle to the flat part 
of the wheel. Near it was placed a verge, or rotating shaft. 




A Time Piece of the Middle Ages 

'The huge and elaborate Clock of Strasbourg Cathedral, in 
Lorraine, was built in 1352 and is an example of the first clocks. 



Ttmf Telling Through the Ages 

esting feature is its curious likeness in mechanical prin- 
ciple to the cloc cs of modem times. Like most eariy clocks, 
it has only one 1". and — the hour-hand. Its ponderous move- 
ment is of iron, laboriously hand-wrought; the teeth of its 
wheels and pinicns were cut out one by one. It was driven 
by a weight of hvt hundred pounds, the cord of which was 
wound round a dmm, or barrel. This barrel carried, at one 
end, a pinion, meshing with the hour-wheel, which drove 
the hands; the fiarsre at the other end of the barrel formed 
the great wheel, r * train. This meshed 

with a pinion - and this in 

turn w., i)on the shaft of the escape- 

wheel. All t v'Tourse, essentialh Jeni train 

of gears, or: is 

The escapement : important part of the whole 

mechanism, because it is the part which makes the clock 
keep time. It is an interrupter , checking the movement al- 
most as soon as, under the urge of the mainspring, it starts 
forward. The frequewcy and duration of these interruptions 
determines the rate of running. Without this, the move- 
ment would run >wn swiftly; 'with it, the operation 
stretches over thirtt :-ours, involving 432,000 ^nZ/frri^pizoni-. 

De Vick's escapement is shown in the illustration. The 
escape-wheel was bent into the shape of a shallow pan, so 
that its toothed e4ge was at a right angle to the flat part 
of the wheel. Near it war> placed a verge, or rotating shaft, 

8H0A HJaaiM 3HT;^C^ 303l4 HMiT A 



ne Modern Clock and Its Creators 



de^ick's Qlock 




GOING PART STRIKING PART 

Side Uitw, ^oing Tart Front "View 

P -IVindingTimon. EP -SitafieTiiiioit. 

W - IVnghts •which furniih tht mctive paver. EW -Sicape Wheel. 

B — 'Barrel abeut which tht •xeight-cord ii vouaj. V —IJerge, with "Pallets meshing in cagt 

f —"Pinion connecting barrel with Hour Wheel. of Escape Wheel. 

H — Mour Wheel to which Hand is attached. F — Foliet, attached to top ofTJerge so as 

G —Qreat Wheel. to swing with it. 

S —Second Wheel. v> —Shiftittg Weights for at^usting clock. 



SO called from a Latin word meaning "turning around." 
On this verge were fastened two flat projections called 
pallets, diverging from each other at about an angle of one 
hundred degrees. The width between the pallets, from 
center to center of each, was equal to the diameter of the 
wheel, so that one would mesh with the teeth at the top of 
the escape-wheel and the other with the teeth at the 
bottom. 

Now, if the upper pallet were between the teeth at the 



*68l9* 



'J'ime 'Telling 'Through the Ages 

top of the wheel, the pressure of the wheel trying to turn 
would push it away until the teeth were set free. But, in so 
doing, it would cause the verge to turn and bring the lower 
pallet between the teeth at the bottom of the wheel. And 
since the bottom of the wheel was, of course, traveling in 
the opposite direction from the top, the action would be 
reversed, and the lower pallet would be pushed away, 
bringing the upper one back between the teeth of the wheel 
again; and so on, *'tick-tock," the wheel moving a little 
way each time, and the pallets alternately catching and 
holding it from going too far. 

The device was kept running slowly by means of a cross- 
bar called a "foliot," fastened across the top of the verge in 
the shape of a T, and having weights on its two ends. 
When this weighted bar was set turning in one direction, it 
would, of course, resist being suddenly stopped and started 
turning the other way, as it was constantly made to do. 
And this furnished the regulating action which retarded 
the motion of the works and kept them from running 
down. 

This involves the principle of the modem balance-wheel 
in both watches and clocks, which is that of inertia; the rim 
of the balance-wheel represents the weights on the bar 
that resist the pull of the pallets. A vital improvement, 
however, is the interception of the hair spring which gives 
elasticity to the pull and thus supplies the elements of pre- 



^he Modern Clock and Its Creators 

cision and refinement. The inertia of the balance-wheel is 
gauged by the weight of the rim and its distance from the 
center; and the last refinement of regulation of the mech- 
anism is produced by moving the tiny screws on the peri- 
phery of this wheel outward or inward. 

We shall see later how this old escapement was in prin- 
ciple much like the improved forms in use to-day. It was 
as quaint and clumsy an affair as the first automobile or 
the first steam-engine. But, like them, it was a great inven- 
tion, destined to achieve great results. For it was the means 
of making a machine keep time. And every clock and watch 
in use to-day depends for its usefulness upon a similar 
device. The tick is the first thing we think of in connec- 
tion with a clock; and it is the most essential thing also, 
because it is the escapement which does the ticking. 

This old clock of de Vick's also struck the hours upon a 
bell and in very much the same way as modern clocks are 
made to do. But the mechanical means by which it did so 
are too complicated to be easily described here. And indeed 
it is unnecessary to do so, since the bell is far less import- 
ant. A clock need not strike, but it must keep time. 

On the fearsome eve of St. Bartholomew, therefore, and 
again within the past generation, the clanging of this old 
clock's bell was brought about by the whirling gears and 
ponderous weights of an early craftsman who wrought his 
work into the ages. 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

As already stated, de Vick's mechanism embodied 
mechanical principles which, although greatly developed 
and improved, are employed even at the present ^ay. All 
the essentials of a clock are there; the motive power — the 
descent of a massive weight — is now replaced by a slender 
spring; the train of gears by which this motion is reduced 
and communicated, are cut to-day with the extreme ac- 
curacy of modern machine work; the hand moving around 
the dial is now accompanied by a longer, swifter hand to 
tell the minutes; the escapement which by checking the 
motive power while yet allowing it to move on step by step, 
retards and regulates — even the numbered striking of the 
unchanging hours. 

De Vick's old clock may have been a crude machine — 
it certainly was a poor timekeeper — but it was the sturdy 
ancestor of all those myriad tribes of clocks and watches 
which warn us solemnly from our towers, chime to us from 
our mantels, or, nestling snugly in our pockets, or clinging 
to our wrists, help us to maintain our efficiency in the com- 
plexities of modern life. The mechanism employed by de 
Vick was retained without any improvement of import- 
ance in all the time-pieces of the next three hundred years. 
The foliot escapement, especially, remained in use much 
longer. Indeed, any modern watchmaker would recognize 
that it was practically a horizontal balance-wheel. 

Long before it was improved upon, watches had been 

-8-84^ 



'The Modern Clock and Its Creators 

invented and clocks had everywhere become common. But 
we shall reserve the watch for the next chapter; for the 
moment, our concern is with clocks alone. 

The disadvantage of the medieval clock was its inac- 
curacy. This was due first to crude workmanship and un- 
necessary friction; but that trouble was presently over- 
come, for the medieval mechanic could be as fine and ac- 
curate a workman as any modern. He had the artist's 
personal pride and pleasure in his skill, and also a great 
unhurried patience, somewhat hard for us to picture in 
this breathless age. At best, however, his work fell far 
short of the accuracy possible with modern machinery. 
Other important difl^iculties were found in the expansion 
and contraction of parts due to temperature variations, and 
the fact that the foliot balance was at its best only when 
running slowly. Altogether, then, these early clocks were 
easily surpassed in accuracy of timekeeping by a sun-dial 
or a good clepsydra. 

The question arises, therefore, why this newcomer in 
the field of timekeeping, should have begun to displace the 
earlier devices. The clock was not yet a better timepiece 
than the sun-dial; why did it grow more common .f" Well, 
for one thing, people like novelties. For another, people 
loved their churches and lived by the chimes of distant 
bells; and the clock was by far the most practical striking 
device, whatever might be its faults in keeping time. But, 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

what was most important of all, it was a machine y suscep- 
tible of infinite improvement and offering a field for endless 
ingenuity. It appealed to that inborn mechanical instinct 
by means of which mankind has wrought his mastery over 
the world. 

We have seen how de Vick*s clock contained, as it were, 
the germ of all our clocks. And, moreover, the medieval 
regarded machinery with profoundest awe. It is the un- 
known which awakes imagination. We wonder at the 
cathedrals of his day, but the medieval knew about ca- 
thedrals; he built them. Considering their comparatively 
cruder tools, lack of modern hoisting machinery, and so 
forth^ their architectural and building abilities exceeded 
even those of to-day. On the other hand, a locomotive or 
a modern watch, such as we glance at without special 
notice, would have appeared to him the product of sheer 
sorcery, too wonderful to be the work of human hands. 

The Middle Ages could not much improve their clock 
without some radical invention; and such a mechanical 
type of invention was yet the province of but few minds. 
The typical craftsman could merely make the clock more 
convenient, more decorative, and more wonderful. To this 
work, he and his fellows addressed themselves with all of 
their patient skill and their endless ingenuity for orna- 
mentation. 

They made clocks for their churches and public build- 

♦&869- 



jTA^ Modern Clock and Its Creators 

ings, and elaborated them with intricate mechanical de- 
vices. The old "Jacks" that struck the bells were only a 
beginning. They made clocks for their kings and wealthy 
nobles, adorning them with all the richness that an artist 
could design and a skilful jeweler execute. They made 
clocks even for ordinary domestic use so quaint in design 
and so clever in workmanship that we exhibit them to-day 
in our museums. One difficulty in determining the date of 
the first invention is that long before the days of de Vick 
and Lightfoot, machines were made to show the day of the 
week and month and to imitate the movements of the 
stars; and the first horological records may refer to clock- 
words of this kind. 

The famous clock' of Strassburg Cathedral shows the 
extreme to which the medieval craftsman carried this kind 
of ingenuity. It was originally put up in 1352 and has been 
twice rebuilt, each time with greater elaboration. It is three 
stories high and stands against the wall somewhat in the 
shape of a great altar with three towers. Among its move- 
ments are a celestial globe showing the positions of the sun, 
moon, and stars, a perpetual calendar, a device for pre- 
dicting eclipses and a procession of figures representing the 
pagan gods from whom the days of the week are named. 
There are devices for showing the age and phases of the 
moon and other astronomical events. The hours are struck 
by a succession of automatic figures, and at the stroke of 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

noon a cock, perched upon one of the towers, flaps his 
wings, ruffles his neck, and crows three times. This clock 
still remains, having last been rebuilt in the four years 1838 
to 1842. But its chief interest is that of a mechanical curi- 
osity. It keeps no better time than a common alarm-clock, 
nor ever did. And in beauty as well as usefulness, it has 
been surpassed many times by later and simpler structures. 

For the first really important improvement in clock 
making we must pass to the latter end of the sixteenth 
century. The Italian Renaissance with its great impulse to 
art and science has come and gone, and the march of events 
has brought us well into the modem world. America had 
been discovered a century and is beginning to be colonized. 
Spain is trying to found a world empire upon blood and 
gold and the tortures of the Inquisition. England is at the 
height of the great Elizabethan period. It is the time of 
Drake and Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh. 

At this period of intellectual awakening, a remarkable 
young man steps upon the scene. In 1564, the year in which 
the wonderful Englishman, Shakespeare, first saw the 
light of day, the scarcely less wonderful Italian, Galileo, was 
born in Pisa. He was gifted with keen eyes and a swift, 
logical mind, which left its impress upon so many subjects 
of human thought and speculation that we are tempted to 
stop as with Archimedes and trace his history. But, one 
single incident must suffice. 

-&88^ 




Ivory and Silver 

Folding Dial 

'German, Seventeenth Century 



Ring Dial in general 

use during Sixteenth and 

Seventeenth Century 




Universal Cube Dial 
German, Eighteenth Century 



Ancestors of the Watch 
Portable and pocket sun dials in the collections of the 
^ Metropolitan Museum. 






IfiiQ aduO IsaiavinU 



Yiovl 
8sdi ^y^bjI 



HOTaW HHT 10 8iIOT833MA 



I'he Modern Clock and Its Creators 

In 1581, this youth of seventeen stood in the cathedral 
of Pisa. Close at hand, a lamp suspended by a long chain 
swung lazily in the air currents. There was nothing unusual 
in such a sight. Millions of other eyes had seen other sus- 
pended objects going through exactly this motion and had 
not given the sight a second thought. At this moment, 
however, a great discovery of far-reaching application — 
one which was to revolutionize clock construction — ^hung 
waiting in the air. Young Galileo took notice. 

The lamp swung to and fro, to and fro. Sometimes it 
moved but slightly. Again, as a stronger breeze blew 
through the great drafty structure, it swung in a consider- 
able arc, but always — and this was the point which im- 
pressed itself upon the Italian lad — the swing was ac- 
complished in exactly the same time. When it moved a 
short distance, it moved slowly; the farther it moved, the 
faster became the motion; in its arc it moved more swiftly, 
accomplishing the long swing in the same time as it did the 
short one. In order to make sure of this fact, Galileo is said 
to have timed the swinging lamp by counting the beating 
of his pulse. 

Thus was discovered the principle of the pendulum and 
its "isochronism." By "isochronism" we mean inequal arcs 
in equal time. In other words, any swinging body, such as a 
pendulum, is said to be "isochronous" when it describes 
long or short arcs in equal lengths of time. This also applies 

»e89^ 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

to a balance-wheel, and hair-spring. And herein lies a re- 
markable fact — this epoch-making discovery was after all 
but a rediscovery. The isochronism of a swinging body was 
known in Babylon thousands of years before, although the 
Babylonians, of course, could not explain it. Lacking in 
application, it had passed from the minds of men, and it 
remained for Galileo to observe the long-forgotten fact and 
to work out its mechanical application. He did not himself 
apply this principle to clock-making, although some fifty 
years later, toward the end of his life, he did suggest such 
an application. 

The first pendulum clocks were probably made about 
1665, by Christian Huyghens, the celebrated Dutch as- 
tronomer and mathematician who discovered the rings of 
Saturn; and by the English inventor, Doctor Robert 
Hooke. The invention is claimed for several other men in 
England and abroad at about the same time; but hardly 
upon sufl[icient authority. 

From that time on, the important improvements of 
clockwork were chiefly made in two directions — those of 
the mechanical perfection of the escapement and the com- 
pensation for changes of temperature. 

There is a little world of invention and discovery behind 
the face of the clock which beats so steadily on your man- 
tel. Look within if you will, and see the compact mechan- 
ism with its toothed gears, its coiled spring, or its swinging 

-©905* 



ne Modern Clock and Its Creators 

pendulum, in which the motion of the cathedral lamp is 
harnessed for your service, — nothing in that grouping has 
merely happened so. You may or may not understand all 
the action of its parts, or the technical names of them; but 
each feature in the structure has been the result of study 
and experiment, as when Huyghens hung the pendulum 
from a separate point and connected it with a forked crank 
astride the pendulum shaft. You can see that forked crank 
to this day, if you care to look; it was the product of good 
Dutch brains. 

Next we come to one of the greatest single improve- 
ments in clock-work, and the chief difference between the 
mechanism made by de Vick and the better ones of our own 
time. When the pallets in a clock are forced by an Increased 
swing of the pendulum or by the form of the pallet faces 
against the teeth of the escape-wheel in the direction op- 
posite to that in which the wheel is moving, the wheel must 
be pushed backward a little way each time, and the whole 
clock action is made to back up a little. You can see that 
this would tend to interfere with good and regular time- 
keeping. George Graham., In London, in 1690 corrected this 
error by inventing the dead-beat escapement which rather 
contradicted its name by working very well and faithfully. 

There are many forms of this escapement and there is no 
need to explain it in detail. But the main idea Is this : At the 
end of each vibration or swing of the pendulum, the escape- 

*€9iS* 



^ime Telling Through the Ages 

teeth, instead of being made to recoil by the downward 
motion of the pallets, simply remains stationary or at rest 
until the commencement of the return swing of the pendu- 
lum. This was brought about by applying certain curves to 
the acting faces of the pallets. But the acting faces of both 
tooth and pallet are beveled, so that the tooth in slipping 
by gives the pallet a "kick" or impulse outward and keeps 
it in motion. Nowadays, even a common alarm-clock has 
an escapement working in this way. 

Then came another remarkably interesting contribu- 
tion. Have you ever wondered why the pendulums of fine 
clocks were weighted with a gridiron of alternate rods of 
brass and steel ? For purpose of ornament .? Not at all — it 
constitutes a scientific solution of an embarrasing problem, 
due to the inevitable variations in temperature. Metals ex- 
pand with heat and contract with cold. Notched iron bars 
can be made to "crawl" along a flat surface by alternately 
heating and cooling them. Bridge-builders sometimes 
arrange sliding points, or rocking points to adjust the dif- 
ferences in the length of the steel. Contraction and expan- 
sion are important factors in all their calculations. But a 
pendulum would change its rate of motion if it changed its 
length and this would interfere with its accuracy as a meas- 
urer of time. Graham worked upon this problem, too, and 
attached a jar of mercury to the rod of his pendulum for a 
weight. When the heat lengthened the rod, it also caused 

-0926* 



T7t(? Modern Clock and Its Creators 

the mercury to rise, just as in a thermometer, and this 
left the "working-length" the same. 

Such mercury-weighted pendulums are not uncommon 
to this day, but the more familiar gridiron came from 
the brain of John Harrison, who, in 1726, fixed the alter- 
nate rods in such a way that the expanding brass rods 
raised the weight as much as the expanding steel rods 
lowered it. Thus they neutralized each other. 

The clock as we know it was now virtually complete. 
There were structural refinements, but no more radical 
improvements to be made. In tracing its development from 
the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, we note one 
curious likeness to the ancient history of recorded time. In 
this case, as before in Babylon, the people first concerned 
with the science were the priests, and after them the 
astronomers, but we note a still more important difference. 

As the medieval passed into the modern, the practise of 
horology passed more and more out of the hands of scient- 
ists into the keeping of commercial workmen. The custo- 
dian of time was at first a priest, and finally a manufac- 
turer. And this change was attended by a vast increase in 
the general use of timepieces, and the correspondingly 
greater influence of time upon society and men's way of 
living. The Middle Ages made clocks and watches; and 
clocks and watches make the age in which we live. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

The TVatch that Was Hatched from the 
"D\(uremburg Sgg*^ 

IN the second act of Shakespeare's play, As You 
Like It, when Touchstone, the fool, meets Jaques, the 
sage, he draws forth a sun-dial from his pocket and 
begins to moralize upon Time. 

Touchstone's dial must have looked like a napkin-ring, 
with a stem like that of a watch, by which to hold it up 
edgewise toward the sun, and a tiny hole in the upper part 
of the ring through which a little sunbeam could fall upon 
the inner surface whereon the hours were marked. This 
pinhole was perhaps pierced through a slide, which could 
be adjusted up or down according to the sun's position at 
the time of year. In principle, therefore, it was a miniature 
of the huge dial of Ahaz of more than two thousand years 
before. 

In another Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, Malvolio is 
gloating in imagination over his coming luxury when he 
shall have married the heiress and entered upon a life of 
wealth and leisure. 

''I frown the while," says he; "and perchance wind up 
my watch, or play with my — some rich jewel." 



'J'he Watch that Was Hatched from the "Nuremburg Egg" 

There, in those two quotations, we have the whole 
meaning of the watch in the time of Queen EHzabeth. 
Touchstone's dial was a practical convenience — a thing to 
tell the time. Malvolio's watch was a piece of jewelry, an 
ornament indicating wealth and splendor. While watches 
had been well known for many years, people wore them 
chiefly for display and told time by means of pocket sun- 
dials. 

For the first watches we must go back to about the year 
1500, shortly after America had been discovered, and 
when the great tower-clocks of de Vick and Lightfoot were 
not much more than a century old. In the quaint old town 
of Nuremberg there lived, at that time, one Peter Henlein, 
probably a locksmith. But a locksmith, in those days, 
would be an expert mechanic — more like a modern tool- 
maker; very likely an armorer also; capable of that fine 
workmanship in metal which we still wonder at in our 
museums. Nuremberg was then very much a medieval 
city, all red-tiled roofs and queer windows, where people 
went about dressed in trunks and jerkins and pointed caps 
and pointed shoes. It looked like Die Meister singer, and 
Grimm s Fairy Tales, and pictures by Howard Pyle and 
Maxfield Parrish; very much like ^'Spotless Town," except 
that it was far from spotless. 

Now, as you remember, there was not until long after 
this any means of making clocks keep anything like ac- 

^950- 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

curate time; so, instead of improving them, people com- 
peted with each other in devising novel and ingenious 
forms. There could be no more desirable novelty than a 
clock small enough to stand upon a desk or table, or even 
to be carried around. Such a clock could not well be driven 
by weights. But Peter Henlein overcame that difficulty by 
using for the motive power a coiled mainspring wound up 
with a ratchet, just as we still do to-day. 

There is some dispute over attributing to Henlein the 
credit for this invention; but at least he did the thing, and 
it cannot be proved that anybody did it before him. 
"Every day," wrote Johannes Coeuleus, in 1511, **pro- 
duces more ingenious inventions. A clever and compara- 
tively young man — Peter Henlein — creates works that are 
the admiration of leading mathematicians, for, out of a 
little iron he constructs clocks with numerous wheels, 
which, without any impulse and in any position, indicate 
time for forty hours and strike, and which can be carried 
in the purse as well as in the pocket." 

There was, however, no invention of any such thing as 
we mean by the term watch to-day that came complete 
from the mind of any one man, but the contrivance 
gradually grew, in shape and structure out of the small 
clock which could be worn at the belt or on a chain round 
the neck. It came to be called a watch because clock meant 
a bell that struck the hours. But many of the first 




The Firs I Pocket Time Piece 

In Shakespear's play, "As You Like It," Touchstone , the 

Fool, draws forth a pocket sun dial, which probably was of the 

"napkin ring' type. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

curn^- ^ n:. so, instead of improving them, people com- 

. each other in devising novel and ingenious 

ihere could be no more desirable novelty than a 

tv small enough to stand upon a desk or table, or even 

to be carried around. Such a clock could not well be driven 

by weights. But Peter Henlein overcame that difficulty by 

using for the motive power a coiled mainspring wound up 

with a ratchet, just as we still do to-day. 

There is some dispute over attributing to Henlein the 
credit for this invcntior! •.h^.M at least he did the thing, and 
it cannot be j vbody did it before him. 

"Every day," wro oeuieuA, in 1511, "pro- 

duces more ingenious inventions. A clever and compara- 
tively young man — Peter Henlein — creates works that are 
the admiration of leading mathematicians, for, out of a 
little iron he constructs clocks with numerous wheels, 
which, without any impulse and in any position, indicate 
time for forty hours and strike, and which can be carried 
in the purse as well as in the pocket.*' 

There was, however, no invention of any such thing as 
we mean by the rrrm watch to-day that came complete 
from the mind y one man, but the contrivance 

gradually grew, in shape and structure out of the small 
clock which could be worn at the belt or on a chain round 
the neck. It came to be called a watch because clock meant 
a bell that struck the hours. But many of the first 

303l4 HMlT T3[^Qp4 1 8ill1 HhT 

^Ai ,^v^oUA-:>wo"T^ '\i\ "^^jA wo^ ik'' ,v:si\(^ I'-va^c^i-^^siiV^ i^l 



'^he Watch that Was Hatched from the "Nuremburg Egg** 

watches had striking apparatus, and this circumstance 
added to the confusion of names. We slangily call a fat, 
old-fashioned watch a turnip; but the first watches were 
very much fatter and more old-fashioned, and might 
fairly have deserved the name. Before long, Henlein was 
making them oval in shape. Hence, they were called 
Nuremberg eggs. 

Here, then, is something which we can really consider a 
watch. Let us see how it compares with those that we 
know to-day. In the first place, being egg-shaped, it was 
thick and heavy — you would not like to carry it in your 
pocket. It had no crystal and only one hand — the hour- 
hand. So much for the outside. 

Inside, the difference was still greater. The works were 
made of iron and put together with pins and rivets. It was 
all hand-work — expert workmanship, indeed — but look at 
the works of your own watch and try to imagine cutting 
the teeth in those tiny gears, or making those delicate 
springs with files and hammers. As pieces of hand-work- 
manship, therefore, the watches made by Henlein and his 
followers were remarkable; but when compared with our 
modern watches, they were crude and clumsy affairs. 

Furthermore, they were poor timekeepers. They had the 
old foliot balance running parallel to the dial. This was all 
very well as long as the watch lay on the table with the 
balance swinging horizontally. But as soon as it was car- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

ried, in a perpendicular position, the arms of the balance -, 
had to swing up and down, which was quite another mat- j 
ter. And then, of course, the crudeness of the works pro- 
duced a great deal of friction. This made it necessary to use ' 
a very stiff mainspring, otherwise the watch would not run 
at all. Such a spring exercised more pressure when fully 
wound than when it was nearly run down. And so the 
worst fault of the foliot was that it speeded up under in- 
creased pressure. 

The first improvements, and, in fact, the only ones for 
nearly two hundred years, were directed toward doing 
away with the unequal pressure of the mainspring and 
thus make the watch keep better time. If you look into the 
back of a very early watch, you may see a curious device 
consisting of a curved arm ending in a pinion, which trav- 
els round an eccentric gear of peculiar shape. This is the 
first type of equalizing mechanism; it was invented in 
Peter Henlein's time and was called the stackfreed; but it 
was a clumsy device at best and a great waste of power. 
Therefore it was gradually displaced by tht fusee. 

Perhaps one might have felt a certain amount of pride 
in carrying about such a thick, bulging mechanical toy, 
as were these early watches, but, as to possessing some- 
thing that would keep correct time — that was a different 
matter. After admiring it and listening to its ticking, one 
would have to guess as to just how far wrong it might be. 

•§989* 



The Watch that Was Hatched from the '^Nuremburg Egg" 

People did not figure closely on minutes and half minutes 
in the day of the Nuremberg egg; there was no "Wall 
Street" and no commuting. And this brings us to a real 
event in the whole story. 

Jacob Zech, a Swiss mechanic, living at Prague in 
Bohemia, Austria, about 1525, began studying the prob- 
lem of the equalization of watch mechanism. He was sure 
that there ought to be some better means than that of the 
clumsy stackfreed. Presently he hit upon the principle of 
the fusee, and Gruet, another Swiss, perfected it. At last it 
became possible to make a watch that would not run fast 
when first wound and then go more and more slowly as it 
ran down — and to do this in a really practical way. Before 
this time, a watch was a clumsy piece of ticking jewelry; 
now it became something of a real time-keeper. Therefore, 
it was not long before people began to want Swiss watches. 
These were the days when skilful Swiss craftsmen worked 
patiently in their little home shops, making some single 
watch-part and making it extremely well, while the so- 
called "manufacturer" bought up these separate parts, and 
assembled them into watches. 

What was the fusee that brought about such a change .? 
Not much to look at, surely — merely a short cone with a 
spiral groove running about it, and a cord, or chain, 
wound in this groove and fastened at the large end of the 
core. Its principle and its action were very simple, and that 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 




<JhCainspring 'barrel and Fusee 



is why it was a great invention. Some one has said that 
anyone can invent a complicated machine to do a piece of 
work, but it takes real brains to make a simple machine 
that will do the same work. 

The shaft of the fusee was attached to the great wheel 
which drove the gears, and the other end of the cord was 
fastened to the mainspring barrel. This is the way in which 
it worked: The mainspring slowly turned the barrel; this 
gradually unwound the cord from the fusee and caused the 
fusee to turn. When the fusee turned, the wheels also were 
forced to turn, and the watch was running. At the start, 
the cord would unwind from the small end where the lever- 
age was least, but as the tension of the mainspring grew 
slowly less, the leverage of the cord grew slowly greater 
and, consequently, the power applied to the wheels was 
always of the same degree of strength. This invention gave 
a great impulse to Swiss watchmaking; several centuries 
later it worked to the disadvantage of English manufac- 



•&I00 3- 



'The Watch that Was Hatched from the "Nuremburg Egg" 

turers, for they continued to use it after other countries 
had found still better methods of power equaHzation. 

The fusee was invented about the year 1525, at a time 
when the world was fairly alive with new ideas. People in 
Europe were just beginning to realize that they were living 
on a sphere and not upon a flat surface, and that there was 
a vast new land on the other side of the ocean. Columbus 
had crossed the Atlantic but a few years before and now 
explorers were making new voyages of discovery in every 
direction. 

Printing, invented by Gutenberg, about a century be- 
fore, was becoming common enough to be a real power in 
the world, bringing the thoughts of men before the eyes of 
thousands without the slow and expensive process of hand- 
copying. The first printed copy of the Bible had made its 
appearance and Caxton had set up his first printing-press 
— all within the lifetime of people then living — and print- 
ing shops were being established in many places. Many 
people were learning to read — a thing that could be said 
of very few in the Middle Ages. They were finding out 
something about the wonderful forgotten civilization of 
ancient times. Everywhere people's minds were stirring. 
We call it the time of the Renaissance, or the rebirth of 
civilization, but in some respects it was more like the 
awakening of the world after a long sleep. Just as a person 
on waking looks first at his clock or watch, so now the 

-&IOI^ 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

world, preparing to be busy and modern, needed some 
better means of telling time. It therefore was both natural 
and necessary that the watch should have received such a 
great improvement as the fusee at just this period. 

Then began the age of those strange, mgenious watches 
which we still find in the museums. For some time, there 
were only a few real improvements. Screws and brass 
wheels were introduced into their construction about 1550, 
and glass crystals about 1600. The minute-hand appeared 
occasionally; but it was not in common use for nearly a 
century afterward. And that shows how watches were re- 
garded in those days. One would think that such an ob- 
vious advantage as that of minute-notation would have 
been seized upon and utilized at once; on the contrary, 
people did not seem to care much about it. What was the 
use of a hand to mark the minutes, when the watch was 
more likely than not to be half an hour or so in error.? 

For real timekeeping there were dials everywhere, and 
there were also fairly good clocks in the towers; at night, 
watchmen patrolled the streets and called out the hours. 
These watchmen were the police of the period; it was part 
of theirduty to call out the time, just as the modern police 
direct people upon the way they wish to go. For timekeep- 
ing, the watch was still less useful than the watchman. 
Made entirely by hand, it was necessarily expensive; 
therefore, it was made regardless of expense. It was 



'J'he Watch that Was Hatched from the "Nuremburg Egg'' 

thought of as MalvoHo thought of It — a possession showing 
the wealth and station of the wearer, a rich jewel, a toy for 
noblemen and for kings. Centuries were to pass before real 
watches were within the reach of common people. 

It is said that Edward VI was the first Englishman to 
possess a watch. This young king, who reigned so short 
a time, will be remembered by many as the young prince 
in Mark Twain's famous story The Prince and the Pauper. 
Mary Queen of Scots had a small watch shaped like 
a skull — a cheerful fashion of the time. Many others were 
shaped in the form of insects, flowers, animals, and various 
other objects. Even to-day the Swiss make many watches 
of curious form. 

Queen Elizabeth and her court selected watches as 
modern women do their hats — to match their various cos- 
tumes. These watches were usually worn on a chain or 
ribbon round the neck and were largely for display. Several 
outside cases were often supplied with watches of that 
period, and they were made to fit on over that which held 
the works; these were variously ornamented with jewels, 
tortoise-shell and intricate pierced work in gold, almost as 
delicate as lace. The covers were decorated with miniature 
paintings, some of which were very beautiful. 

Strangely enough, it was this practise of decorating 
watches that later gave us our plain white enameled dials, 
because enamel was the best material on which to paint 

-tr 103 ^ 



^ime T'elling Through the Ages 

delicately. To the average museum visitor, the interest in 
any collection of old watches, aside from their historic as- 
sociation, lies in their marvelously ornamented cases rather 
than in their mechanism. And in this he very closely re- 
peats the feeling of their original makers or owners; it was 
more important to follow fashion than to know the time. 

This custom of watch-decoration continued more or less 
through the eighteenth century, and even into the nine- 
teenth, although, by that time, watches had, as we shall 
see, become excellent timepieces. The story is told that 
when Dresden was captured by the Prussians in 1757, they 
found in the wardrobe of Count Bruhl, the Saxon Minister, 
a different suit of clothes for every day in the year; each 
had a watch, stick, and snuff-box, appropriately decorated, 
as part of each one. 

Shakespeare never regarded a watch seriously. In Love's 
Labour's Lost he compares a woman to 

<v^ Qerman clock. 
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, 
<tAnd never going aright, being a watch — 

A century after Shakespeare's day. Doctor Johnson re- 
marked that a dictionary was like a watch : "The worst is 
better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go 
quite true." And Pope says in the same vein: 

'77j with our judgments as our watches — none 
Qo just alike, ^et each believes his own. 

-eio4S- 




The "Nuremburg Egg," the First Real Watch 

''Out of a little iron, Peter Henlein constructs clocks which 
- * * can be carried in the pocket." — so wrote Johan?ies 

Coeleus, in 1511. 



Time idling Through the Ages 

^ - ., iO the average museum visit*. i .^i^. interest in 
. ollection of old watches, aside from their historic as- 
:ation, Hes in their marvelously ornamented cases rather 
than in their mechanism. And in this he very closely re- 
peats the feeling of their original makers or owners; it was 
more important to follow fashion than to know the time. 

This custom of watch-decoration continued more or less 
through the eighteenth century, and even into the nine- 
teenth, although, by that time, watches had, as we shall 
see, become excellent timepieces. The story is told that 
when Dresden was captured by the Prussians in 1757, they 
found in the wardrobe of Count Bruhi, th- ^ - '^'nister, 
^ different suit of clothes for every day u, ..^v v, .. each 
had a watch, stick, and snuff-^^^v appropriately decorated, 
as part of each one. 

Shakespeare never regarded a watch seriously. In Love's 
Labour's Lost he compares a woman to 

riA Qerman dock. 
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, 
vjAnJ never geif/g aright, being a watch — 

A century after Shakespeare's day. Doctor Johnson re- 
marked that a dictionary was h'ke a watch: "The worst is 
better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go 
quite true." And Pope savs in the same vein : 

"Tis zvitn our jujg.-.cati as our zvatches — none 
C^o just alike, yd each believes his own. 

hotaV/ jahM t8^i1 3HT '\oo3 o^uaMH^uM" 3hT 

sWjA^ i^':)o\'i ?-Vyvv^U-\^o"> i^n^K^W "v^i^S. ^ivo'v'j "5i\ii'i\ k^ \o ii^O" 



The Watch that Was Hatched from the "Nuremburg Egg" 

All of this reminds one of Dickens' famous character, 
Cap'n Cuttle, whose watch was evidently of the old school. 
Readers of Dombey and Son may remember how "the 
Captain drew Walter Into a corner, and with a great effort, 
that made his face very red, pulled up the silver watch, 
which was so big and so tight In his pocket that It came out 
like a bung. "Warr,'*sald the Captain, handing it over and 
shaking him heartily by the hand, "a parting gift, my lad. 
Put it back half an hour every morning and another quar- 
ter toward afternoon and it's a watch that'll do you 
credit." 

The old idea of regarding the watch as a trinket rather 
than as a timepiece, as an expensive toy rather than as an 
accurate and necessary mechanism, has come down to us 
from the days when a watch was ornamented outside, be- 
cause it could not be really useful within. Even now. In 
spite of the modem demand for accurate timekeeping, that 
attitude has not entirely died away, as Is shown by the 
expression *'gold watch" and "silver watch." Of course, 
there are really no such things; there are merely gold and 
silver cases for steel, brass and nickel wsitchts. Some people 
still continue this mistaken idea by thinking of a watch 
merely as jewelry, as a thing meant more for ornament 
than for use. 



•eio5S* 



CHAPTER NINE 

How a (^y^fCechanical Toy "Became a 
Scientific Timepiece 

Now, since we are at last well Into the story of the 
watch, let us glance back over the road we have 
traveled. We have seen man first beginning to 
think of time by noting the positions of shadows or the 
motions of the stars. Next, we have seen him making his 
plans for days ahead by means of the changes in the moon, 
then by making such division in the flow of time as the 
month, the season, and the year. We have seen him grow- 
ing out of his savage isolated life in caves and forests and 
forming tribes and settlements, and have seen him coming 
out of the darkness of those early ages Into Mesopotamia, 
the Land Between the Rivers, where our first written his- 
tory seems to begin. 

Here, with great cities, temples, and a high degree of 
civilization and culture, we have found priests studying the 
stars and making sun-dials and clepsydrae in order to tell 
the time by shadows, sunbeams, or the dropping of water. 
We have taken a glimpse at the wonderful people of 
Greece and Rome, and have seen how, as they became 
more cultured, they found it necessary to have more ac- 

•&1069* 



Hozu a Mechanical 'Toy Became a Scientific Timepiece 

curate means of telling time. We have considered the ad- 
vantages and disadvantages of the sand-glass, have found 
clumsy pieces of clock-work in church towers, getting their 
running power from weights, in order to strike the bells, 
and have stood with young Galileo in the Cathedral at 
Pisa, when a swinging lamp gave him the idea of the 
pendulum. 

Lastly, we have seen the making of smaller clocks — that 
were made smaller and smaller until they could be carried 
as watches, in which springs were used instead of weights. 
Following this, it has been merely a question of improve- 
ment, as one inventor after another has hit upon some idea 
that would do away with this or that difficulty. 

Thus we have come, in the time of Shakespeare, to a 
clever little contrivance that ticked beautifully but regis- 
tered time rather badly; that took a long while to manu- 
facture by hand, and cost so much that only the rich could 
afford to buy it, and that, in consequence, people were 
proud to own, but did not take seriously as a timepiece. 

In all this journey, covering thousands of years, one 
thing has made itself clear to us — the story of timepieces 
is not a mere mechanical story; it is a human story. Men 
did not put together certain pieces of wood or metal in 
order merely to make mechanism, but to meet a vital need. 
One might almost say that the story of the watch is in the 
watch itself. The works run and the hands move because of 

•&107B- 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

the mainspring, which by pressing steadily forces them 
into motion. In very much the same way, the busy brains 
of the inventors and the busy hands of the workmen have 
been kept active because advancing civiHzation has been 
like a great mainspring, always pressing upon larger af- 
fairs and greater numbers of people, always needing to fit 
its engagements more and more closely together, and al- 
ways calling for better and better means for teUing time. 
Thus, if the watch in the days of Shakespeare and Queen 
Elizabeth was still an inaccurate timepiece, its improve- 
ment was a foregone conclusion. Brains and hands were 
still active; civilization was still pressing. 

It is said that a hog helped in the next development; he 
helped quite unconsciously by furnishing a bristle. In 
order to understand this, we must remember Galileo's 
swinging lamp and the pendulum that the Englishman, 
Hooke, and the Hollander, Huyghens, applied in the mak- 
ing of clocks. It will be recalled that a pendulum swings in 
arcs of different lengths in exactly the same time and that 
this property is called isochronism. Both Hooke and 
Huyghens could see that the application of isochronism 
would be quite as valuable in a watch as in a clock, but 
they realized that this could not be accomplished by means 
of the pendulum. Therefore, each began to experiment, 
and each seems to have hit upon the same idea as a sub- 
stitute for the pendulum in about the year 1665. 



Hozv a Mechanical Toy Became a Scientific Timepiece 

This is where the hog's bristle came into use. One end 
was made fast while the other was bent back and forth by 
the balance, as it swung to and fro. Being short and stiff, 
it acted as a spring; in fact, its motion was something like 
the swing of a small pendulum, and some people incor- 
rectly claim that the name of hairspring first came from 
this use of a hair. Of course, a very fine steel was soon sub- 
stituted for the bristle. Next, it was realized that there 
would be an advantage if a much longer spring were used, 
and obviously the only way in which this could be done 
was by making it in the form of a coil, and so we have the 
delicate, coiled hair-spring, as it is found in our own 
watches to-day. 

The principle of the hair-spring is not unlike that of the 
pendulum:, the farther the pendulum is swung out from 
the lowest point of its arc, the greater is the force that 
gets it back; and the farther a spring is bent from its posi- 
tion of rest, the greater is the force exerted to get it back. 
With both of these devices it is possible to obtain regular 
beats and steady motion. 

It is hard to realize that nearly a hundred years must 
have passed by before the hair-spring came into common 
use. To-day any new device is described in catalogs, writ- 
ten up in the papers, manufactured in quantities and is 
quickly carried by travelers into every country, but in 
those days everything was still made by hand, piece by 

•01095- 



T'ime Telling Through the Ages 

piece, and there was comparatively little travel that would 
admit of its distribution. Ideas made their way very 
slowly. In fact, Julien LeRoy rediscovered the principle of 
isochronism and announced it with a good deal of pride, 
quite ignorant of the fact that Hooke and Huyghens ex- 
plained it nearly a century before. And so the hair-spring 
was slowly adopted by English watchmakers with a num- 
ber of minor improvements. 

Other inventors, of whom presently we shall hear more, 
worked out better methods of escapement, and the watch 
movement developed slowly toward its present form. It 
became possible to tell time more accurately and to make 
arrangements and plans more closely as the watch became 
a better time-keeper. The pace of life was speeding up, and 
people were realizing the value of minutes — even of sec- 
onds. Therefore the minute- and second-hands were added 
to the hour-hand that so long had moved alone around the 
watch-dial. And in 1704, Nicholas Facio, a Swiss doing 
business in London, introduced jeweled bearings into the 
mechanism. 

The importance of jewels is often misunderstood even at 
the present day. Many people do not know why jewels are 
used in a watch, assuming that they are intended for 
ornament or in some way to increase the value. But most 
of the jewels in a watch-movement are placed out of sight; 
and, although they often consist of real rubies or sap- 

-eiios- 



How a Mechanical 'Toy Became a Scientific 'Timepiece 

phires, they are so tiny and their intrinsic value so small ^, 
that no watch requires more than one dollar's worth of 
jewels. They are strictly utilitarian in their purpose. A 
pivot or bearing, running in a hole drilled in a jewel, creates 
almost no friction and requires so little oil that a single 
drop as big as a pinhead is enough for an entire watch. Be- 
cause jewels are so hard and smooth, a watch with jeweled 
bearings runs better and wears less and requires less power 
to drive it, than one in which they are lacking. 

During all the time recounted, the great mainspring of 
civilization had been pressing, ever pressing. Nothing 
could be considered **good enough" if a way could be found 
to improve it. 

At last an improvement came out of the sea. Travel had 
been reaching out in every direction; ships were fitted out 
by scores to take goods from England or the continent of 
Europe to lands across the seas and to bring back the prod- 
ucts of these countries. 

The time had been, but a few generations earlier, when 
people had stood on the shores of the ocean and had won- 
dered what might lie beyond their sight. That water 
stretched out to the "edge of the world" they felt sure, but 
what there happened to it they could not tell. Surely, how- 
ever, it must be peopled with monsters and demons. It was 
foolhardy to venture too far from land. We can hardly 
realize what a piece of insane rashness it must have seemed 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

to most people when Columbus sailed out boldly into this 
vast mystery, nor how the world was thrilled when he 
brought back word of strange lands and strange peoples 
he had found beyond the horizon. 

But by the time now reached in our story the oceans had 
become highways of trade, and men were beginning to 
draw those strange, crude maps of the continents, which 
make us smile until we stop to think how maps might have 
looked had they been left for us to make. At all events, the 
problems involved in navigation were being much dis- 
cussed in every land. 

One of the greatest of these problems was to discover the 
whereabouts of the ship at any given time. When one is out 
of sight of land the sense of location necessarily becomes 
inoperative; one wave looks like another, and there are 
winds and currents which might carry a ship hundreds of 
miles out of its course unless there were some way of 
knowing its true position. At first, the stars, and later the 
compass gave help in giving direction but not in showing 
position. How might this be done ? There was no possible 
way in which the element of telling time did not enter. 

That sounds a bit strange until one stops to think of the 
rotation of the earth once in twenty-four hours. If one 
could travel around the earth, from east to west, at a uni- 
form rate in exactly twenty-four hours, he would find 
clocks and watches indicating the exact minute he started 




in urum 

Nuremburg, before 1561 

One of the Oldest Watches 

in Existence 



Bartholomew Newsom 
London, 1565 



normous Repeater Watch 
Newsom, London, ii;6s,c;- 





Large Brass Table Clock 
Dutch, Seventeenth Century 



■*4 



First Forms of the Watch 

Types of table clocks and two of the oldest watches in existence 
In the collections of the Metropolitan Museum. 



yd AoolO sMbT t98B0 baqfiriS-mmQ ni 

mozwaH wamoIoHnB^ odji aio'lad ,§iudm3iuVl 

jdji ,nobnoJ zaHoifiW jaablO ari? lo anO 

aonsJaixS ni 



HdibW i3J£9q3^ 2uormon3 
jdji ,noLnoJ ^moawaVT 



ilooO aldsT 88Bl9 3§ibJ 



HDTaV/ HHT ^O 8MJIo'5 T8ill1 



How a Mechanical 'Toy Became a Scientific 'Timepiece 

at every step of his journey; and the sun would remain 
steadily at the same height above the horizon, if he always 
kept to one parallel of latitude. His rate of speed would 
have to be about eighteen miles a minute, if he chose to 
travel along the equator, or to state this same thing in 
another way, when it is noon in New York, it is 11 A. M. 
in Chicago, 10 A. M. in Denver and 9 A. M. in San Fran- 
cisco; it is also 1 P. M. several hundred miles out into the 
Atlantic; 2 P. M. still farther out; 5 P. M. in London; 
and so on. In other words, it is some one of all the moments 
of the twenty-four-hour day at the same time, but the time 
that indicates each of these moments is different at different 
points. Therefore, if you could find out the time at any 
point, and could compare it with the time at the place you 
had left, you would know just how far east or west you had 
come, but not how far north or south. 

Ascertaining the time was not difficult; at noon it would 
be shown by the sun. Nor was it difficult to compare the 
time provided one had an accurate timepiece, but a watch 
that ran either fast or slow might mislead one by hundreds 
of miles. You can see how important it was that naviga- 
tors have some means of exactly measuring time. This was 
one of the points at which the great mainspring of civiliza- 
tion pressed hardest upon the brains of inventors and the 
hands of workmen. 

So, from the sixteenth century onward, the leading gov- 

*8-ii3S* 



'Time 'Telling 'Through the Ages 

ernments of Europe offered large rewards for a chronom- 
eter sufficiently accurate to determine longitude at sea. In 
England, Parliament offered twenty thousand pounds, or 
one hundred thousand dollars, for a time-keeper which, 
throughout a voyage to the West Indies, would give the 
longitude within thirty miles. This meant that it must keep 
time within a minute a month, or two seconds a day. Both 
Huyghens and Hooke somewhat naively attempted to 
make a pendulum clock keep time at sea ; but imagine the 
action of a pendulum while a ship was rolling and tossing ! 
The problem was really one for the watchmaker, since a 
clock is made for keeping time while standing in one posi- 
tion and a watch for keeping time while being moved 
about. John Harrison, the inventor of the famous grid- 
iron pendulum, finally won the munificent prize. In 1762, 
after several trials and failures, he succeeded in producing 
a timepiece which varied, under test, only a minute and 
four seconds during a voyage of some five months. This 
was excellent timekeeping — far within half a second a day; 
it made it possible for a captain at sea to determine his 
position within eighteen miles. Harrison's mechanism was 
too complicated for description in these pages. Indeed, it 
was so difficult of comprehension that, before paying him 
his reward, the English government asked Harrison to 
write a book of explanation in order that his inventions 
might be copied by other makers. He did so and finally 

*&ii4^ 



How a Mechanical 'Toy Became a Scientific Timepiece 

received the money. Harrison's ideas have now been 
greatly simpHfied, but, in general, his plan is used in the 
making of marine chronometers to this day; thus, in a 
sense, it is due to Harrison's brain that our great ships are 
able to cross the ocean on almost schedule time. 

Both the first success of the chronometer and the later 
efforts toward improving it had a great influence upon the 
next few generations of watchmakers; the final improve- 
ments were made in the days of the American Revolution. 
It was at this latter period that a man named Thomas 
Mudge worked out the kind of escapement that is still 
used in our watches. A little later, the Swiss-Parisian, 
Abraham Louis Breguet, improved the hair-spring by 
bending its outer coil across the others to their center and 
fastening it at that point in order that the spiral of the 
spring should expand equally in all directions from the 
center. 

The last development of importance consisted in doing 
away with the fusee. The faults of this device had been the 
need of a thick watch to give it room, and the danger that 
a broken mainspring might destroy other parts of the 
movement in its recoil. French and Swiss watchmakers 
reduced the friction until it needed very little power to run 
the mechanism, and then were able to employ a mainspring 
which was not stiff enough to require a fusee. American 
makers adopted this idea, but the British clung to the 



^j 



^ime Telling 'Through the Ages 

fusee and the stiff spring; it has cost them much of their 
prestige as watchmakers and much of their trade. 

Thus, the mechanism of both clocks and watches was 
practically in its present state by the year 1800. The 
*'grandfather's clock" of that date may look old-fashioned, 
but it tells time a modern way, and the mechanical ideas in 
George Washington's watch were not so very different 
from those which we find in our own. There have been 
many small improvements since, but the great inventions 
had all been made. 

It is interesting to remember that most of these inven- 
tions are due to the English artisans of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, although in delicate workmanship 
and beautiful decoration, they were equaled and perhaps 
excelled by the Swiss and by the French. The work of pro- 
ducing a satisfactory timekeeping machine, begun by 
priests and by astronomers, and carried forward by the 
demands of the navigator and the patient labor of the 
craftsman, had ended after thousands of years, in triumph. 
The ticking contrivance of wheels, levers, and springs was 
no longer a mechanical toy; it was a marvelous instrument 
which was made by man with his head and hands and yet 
was almost as accurate in its action as the sun and stars 
themselves. 

Here ends the first great division of our story. The scien- 
tific problem had been solved; what remained was to 

-eii6B* 



How a Mechanical T'oy Became a Scientific 'timepiece 

democratize the keeping of time; to place mechanism equal 
to the best of those days within the reach and within the 
means of every man. In this later development the work 
was to pass out of the hands of artists and inventors Into 
those of manufacturers. Its history from this point on is no 
longer a record of science but a romance of Industry. 



•&ii7^ 



CHAPTER TEN 

'The "Worshipful Qompany'''' and 
6nglish IVatchmaking 

FROM the beginning, there are two sides to the 
history of timekeeping. The first is the story of 
discovery and invention — how men labored for 
thousands of years to produce a contrivance that would 
really tell the time. But if only a few such machines 
existed in the world, it would be of very little use to 
humanity In general, however perfect each might be. 
Accordingly history must now recount how clocks and 
watches came to be made in sufficiently large numbers 
and at sufficiently low cost to be within the reach of all 
who needed them. 

The turning-point from the Inventive to the Industrial 
side of the development was reached about the year 1800. 
Timekeeping has always been a part of history, and history 
a part of timekeeping, and this opening of the nineteenth 
century was a period when history Itself was changing, for 
the progress of civilization is like a journey over a moun- 
tain road; one must needs turn occasionally or one can rise 
no higher. The American Revolution had ended but a few 
years before, and the thinly settled states were trying the 

•&118S* 



'^he ^''Worshipful Company^' and English Watchmaking 

strange experiment of having the people govern themselves 
without a king. In the old world, the people of France had 
suddenly risen up and seized the power from their king, and 
a bloody struggle had ensued in which many of the old 
nobility had been beheaded. In England, the power of the 
throne was growing less and the power of the people 
greater. In fact, the whole world was becoming more and 
more filled with democratic ideas and ideals than ever 
before. 

Now, this same democratic idea that set up republics 
was getting ready to put a watch into every man's pocket. 
At first, everyone had told the time for himself, and had 
told it badly. Now, after thousands of years, it had come 
about that a few had the means of telling time accurately. 
The great inventors mentioned in the last few chapters had 
contributed one idea after another, until, among them all 
they had worked out clocks and watches that would keep 
correct time. But these timepieces were not yet convenient 
in form, and they certainly were not yet convenient in 
price for the average man. They still were made by hand in 
small quantities, and such a condition would have to be 
changed before it would be possible for everyone to tell the 
time and to tell it well. 

Naturally, the industrial and business development of 
watchmaking began long before 1800, long before, indeed, 
the time at which the inventions were all complete. For 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

centuries the two sides of the story, the inventive and the 
industrial, had progressed side by side, but for the sake of 
clearness, we have described the inventions first. Now we 
must glance back again to the time of Shakespeare, when 
the period of modern inventions was just beginning, in 
order to see how the business side of watchmaking started 
upon its growth. 

Four nations have been concerned in this development 
— England, France, Switzerland, and the United States. 
The English worked in one way; the French worked in 
another; the Swiss, in still another; while the Americans 
took up the final organization of the work in a manner that 
was thoroughly typical of their peculiar genius. 

The mechanical improvements and inventions were 
mostly made, as we know, by the English. But for the be- 
ginnings of the watch industry in England one must go 
back to a time before the days of Hooke and Huyghens, to 
the year 1627, the year of incorporation of the Worship- 
ful Clock-makers, Company. Imagine such a name being 
chosen to-day! The Worshipful Clock-makers' Company 
was the original trade-organization of the business in Eng- 
land. It was not at all like our modern companies but was 
one of those great trade "guilds" which played such an 
important part in the development of European industry. 

People sometimes think of the medieval trade-guild as 
something like the modern trade-union, but this is a mis- 

♦e 1 20 s- 




gi; Shell Shaped 
Rock Crystal Watch 
French 





Cross Shaped 

Rock Crystal Watch 

French 



Book Shaped 

Swiss Watch 

15601600 






When Watches Were Jewels 

Watches of the Sixteenth Century, with but one hand, and 
pierced metal or rock crystal cases. In the collections of the 
Metropolitan Museum. 



oodi juodfi 



91£Jjp2 



IbvO 



baqfiriS iIoo3 
oodi-odji 



8JHWhJ_ H^hW 8HH3TaW M3hW 



The "Worshipful Company" and English Watchmaking 

take; it was in many ways quite different. Perhaps one 
might call it a sort of a cross between a labor-union and a 
manufacturing trust. Within a certain district, all who 
were occupied in a particular business were required to 
belong to the guild; otherwise they were not allowed to do 
business, and the ''district" might include the whole coun- 
try. In order to gain an idea of a guild, imagine in this 
country a single association of jewelers to which everyone 
connected with the jewelry business was forced to belong, 
whether he were manufacturer or retailer, employer, or 
employee, the head of his firm or the last new clerk behind 
the counter. Or, to look at it in another way, imagine a 
trust controlling the whole industry and a union including 
all the workmen under a closed-shop system, and then sup- 
pose that the trust and the union were one and the same. 
That would be like one of the great medieval guilds. It was 
easy for such an organization to create a monopoly of the 
entire national product. 

Sometimes the guild would forbid the importation of 
foreign goods and would not permit workmen to come from 
other countries. It usually regulated, to some extent, the 
conditions of wages and labor. It fixed its own standards of 
quality of the product; if goods did not come up to this 
standard, they might not be sold, and the rules of the guild 
had practically the force of law. But it did not attempt to 
control prices, nor to limit the quantity of production, nor 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

to interfere, except very indirectly, with free competition 
among its own members. 

Thus, it was not, in our modern sense of the conception, 
a company at all, but an association of independent manu- 
facturers or tradesmen, each in business for himself, each 
in competition with his fellow craftsmen, and all kept upon 
a tolerably even footing by limiting the amount of labor 
that each one might employ. Its members were the master \ 
craftsmen, each the head of his own house; through them 
were associated the journeymen, or skilled workmen in 
their employ, and the apprentices. These latter might rise 
to be masters, in business for themselves. But no one with- 
out such a connection could engage in the business at all, 
in any capacity whatever. 

The Worshipful Clock-makers' Company, under its 
charter granted by Charles I, had the power to make rules 
for the government of all persons following the trade with- 
in ten miles of London, and for regulating the trade 
throughout the kingdom. Its first master, or president, was 
David Ramsay, who was mentioned as having been "con- 
structor of horologes to His Most Sacred Majesty, James 
I," and is one of the characters in Scott's novel ''The 
Fortunes of Nigel.'" Its wardens or executives were Henry 
Archer, John Willowe, and Sampson Shelton; and there 
was, besides, a fellowship, or board of directors. The com- 
pany proceeded at once to forbid all persons "making, 

-§122 5* 



'T'h^ ''Worshipful Company'* and English Watchmaking 

buying, selling, transporting, and importing any bad, 
deceitful clocks, watches, larums, sun-dials or cases for the 
said trade," and full power to search for, confiscate and 
destroy all such inferior goods, *'or cause them to be 
amended." 

This company limited the volume of business by for- 
bidding any one master to employ more than two appren- 
tices at one time without express permission; and, since all 
journeymen must first pass through the stage of appren- 
ticeship, this tended to keep up wages by limiting the labor 
supply and to keep competition on a fair basis. The coat of 
arms of the company represented a clock surmounted by 
a crown, the feet resting upon the backs of four lions, all of 
gold, upon a black ground; on either side were the figures 
of Father Time and of a king in royal robes; and the motto 
beneath read: Tevipus Imperator Rerum, or "Time, the 
Emperor of Things." These matters sound rather quaint to 
us, but perhaps the quaintest of them all is the idea of a 
monopoly concerning itself so jealously with the quality of 
the product, and letting prices and competition practically 
alone. 

It was under such conditions that the English work was 
done and the inventions made. Huyghens was, of course, 
not an Englishman; and Hooke was rather an inventor 
and a scientist than a manufacturer. Both these men them- 
selves made clocks and watches, but they made them only 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

as instruments to assist them in their researches, or as 
working-models of their design. It was often said of Hooke 
that he never cared to develop an invention after he had 
proved that it would work. But once these first inventions 
had been adopted, the real production of timepieces was in 
the hands of the Clock-makers' Company, and the great 
names were those of clock-makers. 

These were the days when the leaders of the industry 
worked with their own hands as well as with their heads. 
We may imagine the master seated in the front room of his 
shop studying over a new model, or putting together and 
decorating one already made; or, perhaps, making with his 
own hands some of the most delicate parts. From the back 
rooms would come the sound of tapping or filing as the 
journeymen and apprentices were hard at work upon their 
various tasks. Meanwhile, perhaps some apprentice, stand- 
ing outside the door, would call out to passers-by and urge 
them to step in and buy. This was a favorite form of ad- 
vertising in that time. For that matter, we still have our 
"barkers" and "pullers-in" at Coney Island and elsewhere. 
Everything about the small business was carried out under 
the personal direction of the master and, where necessary, 
by his own hand. The phrase "clockmaker to the King'* 
meant something more when applied to such a man than 
merely that royalty had purchased some product of his 
craft. 



I 



^he "PForshipful Company'^ and English Watchmaking 

Such a one was Thomas Tompion, often called "the 
father of English watchmaking." He was the leader of his 
craft in the time of Charles II and he, more than anyone 
else, worked out the inventions of Hooke for actual manu- 
facture. He left his father's blacksmith shop to become a 
clock-maker, from this he went on to the more delicate 
work of making watches, and at last became a famous mas- 
ter of his guild. It may fairly be said of him that he set the 
time for history in his day, for most of the royalty and 
great men of Europe timed all their doings from banquets 
to battles by Tompion watches. 

Meanwhile, he, too, was making watchmaking history 
by his improvements. Tompion made watches with hair- 
springs, balance-wheels and escapements with various im- 
provements. His design of the regulator is nearly that in 
modern use. His cases, too, were as famous as the move- 
ments that he made. The so-called "pendulum watches" 
were then much in fashion, and Tompion met the demand 
by making a number of them. They did not, of course, work 
with a pendulum; but one arm of the old foliot balance 
could be seen through an opening in the case or dial, and 
looked like a pendulum swinging to and fro. To read the 
advertisements of that day one would think that all lost or 
stolen watches were of Tompion's making, so often does his 
name appear in them. 

Many legendary stories are told about Tompion's work. 



T'ime 'Telling Through the Ages 

It has been set down in cold print that Queen Mary gave 
one of his watches to Philip II of Spain, and that he made 
watches for Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately for such 
stories, Tompion was not born until 1638, by which time 
both Mary and Elizabeth had been dead for some years. 
But though the legends themselves are untrue, yet they do 
shed some light upon their subject, for such stories, true or 
false, are not told about unimportant men. And it is true 
that Tompion grew so celebrated that at his death, in 1713, 
he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where only the great 
may have resting-places. 

Another famous watchmaker was George Graham, the 
inventor of the mercury pendulum. He first was Tompion's 
journeyman, then his partner, and at last became a well- 
known astronomer, having become interested in astronomy 
through making astronomical clocks. But his great contri- 
bution was the invention of the dead-heat escapement, 
which, in one form or another, is in use in all the best 
clocks and watches of the present time, and which has had 
more to do with making their accuracy possible than has 
any other improvement since the discovery of the isoch- 
ronism of the pendulum and hair-springs. Graham, also, 
is buried in Westminster Abbey; his body lies beside that 
of Tompion, his teacher and friend. 

Another famous figure was Daniel Quare, the first to 
devise the mechanism for driving the two hands as we have 



'The "Worshipful Company^' and English Watchmaking 

it to-day. Quare was a Quaker, and was no less prominent 
in the Society of Friends than in his business. As a Quaker, 
he was opposed to taking an oath of any kind, and was 
what we now call a "conscientious objector" to warfare. 
Therefore, at the same time that he was being honored by 
royalty for his work, he was being prosecuted and fined for 
his refusal to pay taxes for the support of the army and of 
the Established Church. When he was made clock-maker 
to King George I, means had to be devised for excusing 
him from taking the oath of allegiance. 

It was Quare who originated the practise of giving to 
each watch a serial number, so that it could always be 
identified. This is, of course, a common custom with us; we 
also number automobiles, and many other manufactured 
articles of value, and Quare's device of numbering watch- 
movements may very well have given the start to all this. 

Still other famous watchmakers were Harrison and 
Arnold and Earnshaw, who between them developed and 
perfected the marine chronometer that we discussed in the 
last chapter; and Mudge, in whose hands watch-movements 
really became modern in type. Men of this kind thought 
first of producing reliable work which would give service; 
ornaments, curiosities of workmanship, and even con- 
venience, were secondary. Some of these men were ex- 
tremely independent; for example, Arnold, in his early 
days and by way of establishing a reputation, made a re- 

*&i27e* 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

peating watch less than a half-inch in diameter — so small 
that it was worn set in a ring; but when King George III 
had bought the masterpiece, and the Empress of Russia 
offered one thousand guineas (more than five thousand 
dollars) for a duplicate, Arnold coolly excused himself on 
the plea that he desired the specimen to remain unique. 

Time passed; machinery began to be employed in man- 
ufacturing and hand-work declined. The guild system in 
every line slowly changed into our modern organized in- 
dustry. This was only natural, for factories were becoming 
larger, their output was increasing and the head of the 
business was no longer likely to be himself a master work- 
man. The greater part of this change, of course, took 
place in the nineteenth century, and was primarily owing, 
to the increased use of machine-power and improvement" 
in transportation. But as regards watchmaking in Eng- 
land, the substitution never became complete, forthebull-j 
dog quality in the Englishman has always made him hol( 
fast to his ideas. Habits died hard, and the old methods 
were changed slowly and under protest, even when thest 
changes spelled progress. 

At first, as we have seen, the watch was the work of one! 
man and of his assistants, and was almost entirely hand-j 
made. In those days, the trade was supplied by a mul- 
titude of small independent manufacturers. To make ai 
single watch might take weeks or months; and every onej 

*&I28B- 




Late — In Spite of His Two Watches 

The gallant of Colonial times often carried two watches, as was 
the fashion, but often they were both unreliable. 



/ Through the Ages 

.- .> than a half-inch in diameter — so small 

, .jrn set in a ring; but when King George III 

.j.^.it the masterpiece, and the Empress of Russia 

rf^red one thousand guineas (more than five thousand 
iu>llars) for a duplicate, Arnold coolly excused himself on 
the plea that he desired the specimen to remain unique. 
Time passed; machinery began to be employed in man- 
ufacturing and hand-work declined. The guild system in 
every line slowly changed into our modern organized in- 
dustry. This was only natural, for factories were becoming 
In^eer, their output was increasing and the head of the 

... mess was no longer likely to be himself a master work- 
man. The greater part of this change, of course, took 
place in the nineteenth century, and was primarily owing 
to the increased use of machine-power and improvement 
in transportation. But as regards watchmaking in Eng- 
land, the substitution never became complete, for the bull- 
dog quality in the Englishman has always made him hold 
fast to his ideas. Habits died hard, and the old methods 
were changed slowly and >'n'^-- protest, even when these 
changes spelled progress. 

At first, as we have seen, the watch was the work of one 
man and of his assistants, and was almost entirely hand- 
made. In those days, the trade was supplied by a mul- 
titude of small independent manufacturers. To make a 
sinp^le watch might take weeks or month?- ar;d every one 

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ne ^'Worshipful Company'' and English Watchmaking 

must be made separately and patiently, regardless of 
labor or expense. So long as this method could hold its 
own, the English watchmakers led the world; their 
watches were good, but they certainly were not cheap. 

After a time, other countries began to use more modern 
methods, and English watches could no longer stand com- 
petition in the world's markets. However, the bulldog 
quality still held; English manufacturers preferred to lose 
ground rather than change their methods. The introduc- 
tion of machinery and the employment of women opera- 
tives were each bitterly opposed. Factory production was 
never adopted on a large scale, nor was there much com- 
bination of small independent manufacturers. Necessarily, 
these things did, at last, come to be done; but half-heart- 
edly, and without much success. At one time, for example, 
there were some forty small factories making various parts 
which each watch manufacturer assembled and adjusted 
for himself. 

The Clock-makers' Company is still in existence; al- 
though now, of course, it has developed into a society like 
the ordinary modern association of manufacturers. Under 
pressure of change and competition, English manufac- 
turers were compelled unwillingly to change their system 
of production, but the character of the watches they would 
not change. The same country which had made so many 
of the mechanical inventions finally settled down into sat- 

•§1299* 



*Time 'Celling 'Through the Ages 

isfaction with its models at a time when other nations were 
continuing to make improvements, as, for example, when 
they clung to the fusee after watchmakers abroad had 
found a better substitute. 

The English watch has remained heavy, substantial, and 
reliable; it is an excellent mechanism produced regardless 
of expense. Such a watch cannot be made cheaply, least of 
all by British methods. There has been something obsti- 
nate in the maker's attitude; if the law of supply and de- 
mand called for something different, so much the worse for 
the law. The English have been slow to see the possibilities 
in the cheap watch. They have not realized that a watch 
need not be expensive in order to keep good time. They 
started to put the watch into universal use, but left to 
other nations the completion of the process. 



•01303* 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

What Happened in France and 
Switzerland 

|4 CROSS the English Channel lives a race of a very 
/ ^ different character. The French are people of 
^ A- highly adaptable minds; often they see possibil- 
ities in the inventions of other nations which those other 
nations have failed themselves to see. The automobile was 
first made in the United States, but the French soon de- 
veloped it into something that was better than our early 
clumsy cars, and we were years in overtaking them. The 
Wright Brothers first learned the secret of aerial flight, and 
then Wilbur Wright sailed for France, where the people 
went wild with enthusiasm over the idea of flying; it was in 
France that aviation really became what it is to-day. 

The French have always been fine mechanics and fin- 
ished workmen. It was to, be expected that they would do 
something artistic and interesting with the manufacture of 
timepieces. They could not make a better watch than the 
British were turning out toward the end of the eighteenth 
century. Nobody could — but they could make it more 
beautiful. In Shakespeare's time and afterward, while 
watches were still more valuable as works of art than they 



*&i3i 



£u 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

could be as timepieces, the richest work of this nature was 
done in France. There watches were made in the form of 
mandoHns and other musical instruments, in the form of 
flowers, in the form of jeweled butterflies, and in wonderful 
cases, painted and enameled and engraved. In the J. 
Pierpont Morgan collection in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York, there is a watch which, in 1800, on the 
fete-day after the battle of Marengo, Napoleon Bona- 
parte gave to Murat, who was his brother-in-law and one 
of his generals. On the back cover of this watch appears a 
miniature portrait of Napoleon himself. And since he him- 
self was the author of the gift, one may assume that it 
represented the Great Emperor's own conception of him- 
self. 

The wrist-watch, to-day a military necessity, was at 
first a French idea. It is interesting to learn that the 
merchants and makers of this kind of work were in their 
own time called neither watchmakers nor horologists, but 
toymen. There again is shown the old idea about watches; 
they were not timepieces but toys. 

Later on, toward the end of the period of invention, 
when first, the clock, and soon afterward, the watch, had 
become fairly accurate timekeepers, the French makers 
again took the lead in the same way; once more they beau- 
tified what they could not practically improve. The French 
clocks of the period of Louis XIV and his successors are 

*&I32S* 



What Happened in France and Switzerland 

celebrated for their design. One might easily suppose, from 
an examination of the great modern collections of rare and 
precious watches in our museums that the French had been 
the leading watchmakers of the world, for the specimens 
there found being selected chiefly for beauty or value from 
the collector's point of view, are oftener of French than of 
any other make. Yet it must not be supposed that the 
French made no inventions. The credit for some of the im- 
portant improvements is disputed between the English, 
French and Swiss, and it is not always easy to decide 
which nation has the better claim. Furthermore, certain of 
the French watchmakers came from Switzerland while at 
various times, some of those in France moved to England, 
especially during the reign of Terror. The distinctions are 
somewhat confused and we can only speak in a general 
way. 

However, while the watchmaking industry was develop- 
ing in France, it gave forth a seed which took root in new 
soil. In the hill country of eastern France, in the town of 
Autun, there lived a watchmaker named Charles Cusin. 
One day, in 1574, for reasons that we do not know, he 
moved a few miles eastward across the border into Switzer- 
land and there settled in the beautiful lake city of Geneva. 
He probably had no thought that this personal act of a 
private citizen would have an effect upon history, but an 
industry employing thousands of people and making mil- 

-§133^ 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

lions of dollars worth of goods can be traced back to the 
time when he crossed the border. 

Remember that this was back in the days of Shakes- 
peare and Queen Elizabeth, while watches were still 
esteemed jewels and ornaments for the wealthy, and when 
the improvements which later made them practically use- 
ful had not yet been invented. The business side of watch- 
making was thus growing up at the same time with the 
inventive and scientific; it was preparing itself for the day 
when the mechanism should be perfected, and the only 
remaining task would be to popularize its perfection. 

Charles Cusin liked Switzerland and thirteen years later 
he became a citizen. In the course of time, he was active in 
founding a watchmaker's guild in Geneva and from that 
period Geneva watches have been famous. This does not 
mean that Switzerland had contained no watchmakers 
before Cusin's appearance, but we are considering the 
beginnings of a great industry and not mere instances of j 
isolated workmen. The man from Autun seems to have 
been one of those energetic leaders who see possibilities and 
know how to organize. It is largely through such men that 
the world progresses. 

You will remember that in an early chapter we touched 
upon the way in which men first began to exchange the 
results of their work in order that each man might devote 
most of his time to the special task for which he was best 



What Happened in France and Switzerland 

fitted, such as hunting, or the making of weapons. Through 
this exchange, everyone was enabled to Hve better than 
anyone could have lived by himself. But if it were true 
that people doing different things could help each other, it 
also became true, after a while, that people doing the same 
thing could help each other and could help the general pub- 
lic, by learning to co-operate. They could exchange ideas, 
improve their work, and bring about better conditions. 
This was one of the effects of the guilds — they changed 
crafts into industries. 

The guild with which Charles Cusin now had to do — 
some say he was its sole founder — ^was a very dignified and 
important board of master-workmen. It was founded 
about fifty years earlier than was the Worshipful Clock- 
makers' Company in England, and its members were no 
ordinary workmen. Switzerland was, and still is, a thor- 
oughly independent little country and a man skilful 
enough to make a whole watch with his own hands was apt 
to be a man who realized his own worth. 

The members of this guild were decidedly particular 
about their dignity and their meetings were serious occa- 
sions, as may be seen from Article I of their regulations 
which read: "Whenever the master workmen shall meet in 
a body to discuss subjects pertaining to their guild, they 
shall, before proceeding to such discussion, offer prayer to 
God beseeching Him that all that they say and do may 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

rebound to His glory and may further the interests of 
these people." 

As a matter of fact this dignity was based upon a correct 
conception that has been somewhat overlooked in the 
present busy age. The man who has to do either with the 
manufacture or sale of timepieces does well to take his po- 
sition seriously since he is a most important link in our 
entire civilization. Such a man may well reflect upon the 
fact that without the timepieces which he produces or sells, 
the world would drop into hopeless confusion, for human 
society is able to run smoothly and efficiently only when it 
is correctly timed. Workmen and dealers engaged in such 
a vital industry have a great responsibility to their fellow- 
men. 

It is probable that members of this guild who met from 
time to time in the Swiss city by the lake shores, under the 
shadows of the snow-topped Alps, realized something of 
this responsibility. Their timepieces were not yet as accur- 
ate as are ours of to-day, and the world was not yet so busy 
that its affairs required the closest adjustment, but they at 
least were trying earnestly to keep the human cogs run- 
ning smoothly by turning out watches as nearly perfect as 
their skill and knowledge would permit. 

This may be seen again in Article V of their regulations; 
"The functions of the jurors are to enforce the laws of the 
guild and to provide that there be no infringement of the 






Limoges Enamel 

Watch 
English 1610-25 



English Repeater 
about 1650 ' 





Silver 

Skull Watch, French. 
Intended to remind the 
wearer that each second 

brought death nearer 




Gold Enamel 
Watch — French 




French Watch ' 
intended for the 
head of a cane, 
1645-70 



Agate Case 
French 



Seventeenth Century Watches 

Grew more elaborate and ornamental, but scarcely more useful. 
In the collections of the Metropolitan Museum. 



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What Happened in France and Switzerland 

same. To this end, they shall be required to visit each 
journeyman at least four times during the year, having 
power to seize all articles which do not conform to the 
specifications now in force, to report all delinquents to the 
worthy governing board, and to punish the offenders in 
accordance with the gravity of their fault." 

It is quite clear that Geneva was out for quality in 
watches, and, indeed the name of the Swiss city has always 
been associated with quality. Nevertheless, they were no 
angels — those old Swiss craftsmen; they were in fact quite 
preponderatingly human. Thus it was not long before they 
began to make a tight little monopoly of their business. 
They restricted the number of workmen who might be ad- 
mitted to the guild, and they secured special ordinances by 
means of which all other watchmakers were forbidden to 
establish themselves within a certain distance of the city. 
In other words, they did not purpose allowing the new 
and promising industry to grow beyond their control. 

There were, however, other independent people in those 
days who hadn't the slightest intention of being bound by 
such restrictions. Here and there, a watchmaker left 
Geneva to carry on his work in some foreign city, as, for 
example, in Besancon, France. Thus began a competition 
which grew and spread as time went on. 

This competition developed some interesting features. 
For example, the guild in Geneva obtained the passage of 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

laws forbidding anyone from bringing into the city, in a 
finished state, a watch constructed within a certain dis- 
tance. "Schemes" for watches and certain parts might be 
made at will, but only members of the citizen guild were 
permitted to complete these schemes. 

Such restrictions naturally did not tend toward low- 
priced watches; but all watches in those days were neces- 
sarily high-priced, and a man wealthy enough to afford one 
was apt to seek the best that could be bought. Genevans 
strictness gave it so great a reputation that during the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries foreign watchmakers 
flocked to the Swiss city very much as art students later 
journeyed to Paris, and it became the acknowledged center 
of the European industry. As time went on the demand for 
time-pieces became more widespread and many Genevans 
moved to other cities where they became dealers in Geneva 
watches. It is said that, in 1725, the city of Constantinople 
contained as many as eighty-eight mercantile agents who 
had become established in this way. 

One hundred years after the founding of the guild,j 
Geneva was producing five thousand watches a year, hav- 
ing one hundred masters of the guild and three hundred! 
journeymen. Now five thousand watches is no small output! 
when it is considered that each one must be constructed! 
entirely by hand and occupied a matter of weeks in th( 
making; yet, by 1799, the city contained nearly six thou- 



What Happened in France and Switzerland 

sand watchmakers and jewelers and was producing fifty 
thousand timepieces a year. 

Not many miles to the northward from Geneva is an- 
other mountain city — that of Neuchatel. Neuchatel also 
contained an enterprising and skilful population, for the 
Swiss people seem to have been naturally ingenious and 
skilful in the use of tools. Doubtless the mountainous 
character of the country has had something to do with this 
fact; farming and fruit-raising are slow, hard work in their 
rocky soil and severe climate and the making of bulky ar- 
ticles is not desirable where transportation must be had 
over mountain trails. 

The Swiss with their clever fingers had long been famous 
for their wood-carving; now, when they had a chance at an 
industry which called for delicate and skilful hand-work 
and which produced goods of small size and high value, it 
exactly suited them. 

Geneva *'saw it first,'* but kept it so closely to herself 
that it was several generations later before watches were 
known in the Neuchatel district not far away, yet, this 
district is another great center of the industry. 

It is said that in 1680, more than one hundred years after 
Charles Cusin moved to Geneva, a horse-dealer from the 
little town of La Sagne, came home from his travels and 
brought with him an English watch. Great was the wonder 
that it excited among the simple people of his native place. 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

They passed from hand to hand the Httle ticking mechan- 
ism which had the strange power to tell time, and then one 
day the ticking ceased, which perhaps is not surprising, in 
view of the freedom with which the watch had been han- 
dled. 

The horse-dealer knew nothing of the mechanism but 
was very anxious to have the works set right. It chanced 
that there was a young locksmith in La Sagne, a lad of only 
fifteen, named Daniel Jean Richard, who was so skilful and 
ingenious that he had already made repairs in the tower 
clock of the village. "Show the watch to Daniel Jean 
Richard" said everybody. 

The delighted lad began to take the delicate mechanism 
apart, studying carefully each wheel and spring and lever 
until he felt that he understood exactly how it should 
work. Then, when he had succeeded in reassembling the 
parts and in making the watch tick bravely once more, he 
was seized with a great ambition to build another one all 
by himself. 

After many experiments with his crude locksmith tools, 
he did produce a watch which would run and which would 
tell time after a fashion — the first watch ever made in the 
Neuchatel district — but it did not satisfy his artist's soul 
and he realized that he must have better tools. 

Somebody told him that there was in Geneva a machine 
for cutting wheels, and he set out to see it for himself, only 

*§i40B- 



What Happened in France and Switzerland 

to come back sadly disappointed. Wherever he asked to see 
the machine, the canny Geneva craftsmen shook their 
heads. This eager lad from another town had far too intel- 
ligent a face to be allowed to learn the precious secrets. 
The most that they would do was to let him have a few of 
the wheels made by the machine. 

Then he began to work out for himself a machine to cut 
the wheels, and at last succeeded in the task, so that before 
long he was well on the way to becoming a watch manufac- 
turer. Richard, however, was generous with his ideas; he 
instructed a number of the young men of his district, so 
that watchmaking soon began to flourish in his town and in 
those about it. 

We have now seen how the watchmaking industry be- 
came established in two great centers— in Geneva, where the 
highest quality was maintained, but under the rule of the 
guild, which did not encourage quantity of output, and in 
the Neuchatel region where no guild system existed. In the 
course of time this latter region overtook and passed in 
quantity of output that of Geneva. By 1818, the Neucha- 
tel district of the Jura was turning out watches at the rate 
of 130,000 a year. 

The solid old Geneva watchmakers criticized their rivals 
as being less exacting in quality and less careful as to the 
standard of gold used in their cases, but the Neuchatel 
people had no difficulty in finding customers; we read that 

*&I4IB* 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

one hundred and forty of their merchants went twice a 
year to the Leipsig fair, where they sometimes sold watches 
to the value of four million francs ($800,000) in a year. 

The two principal centers of Swiss watchmaking have 
been mentioned although, of course, watches were made in 
other districts as well. It is easy to see that many genera- 
tions ago it had already become a very large industry, and 
so we need not be surprised to learn that even to-day the 
tiny inland country produces a larger annual export value 
of watches than even our vast United States. Watchmak- 
ing has been so large a source of wealth that the Swiss gov- 
ernment has aided it in every way, including the establish- 
ment of schools and courses for training skilled workmen. 
More than sixty thousand Swiss people are directly em- 
ployed in the Swiss watch industry and over three hundred 
thousand, or one-twelfth of the entire population, are in- 
directly connected with it. The Swiss have also made many 
inventions and improvements so that they have had much 
to do with the development of the watch itself as well as 
with the industry. 

As we have already seen, it was a Swiss who invented the 
fusee, another who introduced the use of jewels for reduc- 
ing friction and the stemwind is also of Swiss origin. It was 
the Swiss, too, who, early in the nineteenth century, did 
away with the solid upper plate which covered the works 
and used, instead, a system of bridges. The bridge form of 



What Happened in France and Switzerland 

movement allows each part to be repaired or adjusted sep- 
arately and to-day it is to be found in all watches of the 
higher grades. 

The Swiss invention of the fusee, described in Chapter 
VIII, played an important part for several hundred years, 
but at last it was replaced by something simpler and still 
more effective. Made to equalize the difference in the pres- 
sure exerted by a stiff mainspring when first wound up and 
when partly run down, it worked beautifully but was 
rather clumsy; and it required comparatively heavier parts 
which naturally necessitated the use of greater power. 
Thus friction and, consequently, wear were increased. But 
the Swiss by making watch-parts that were very light but 
yet strong, and by reducing friction principally through 
the introduction of jewels into the mechanism, succeeded 
at last in getting a movement that could be run with very 
little power. So they now could use a weak and slender 
mainspring, made so long that only its middle part ever 
was wound and unwound, and thus the pressure remained 
equal, and the use of the fusee was no longer necessary. 
This principle, called the "going barrel" construction, re- 
duced friction, and made the thin modern watch a possi- 
bility. The American makers, as we shall presently see, 
adopted the "going barrel" construction practically from 
the first. They had no traditional prejudices, and they 
knew a good mechanical idea when they saw it. 

-§ 143 ^ 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

But the British would have none of it. Their national 
bulldog quality set its teeth on the old idea that had given 
them their heavy, substantial, accurate watches, and hung 
on grimly. The Swiss watches might be lighter and more 
•graceful but they questioned their lasting qualities. The 
Swiss could make watches more beautifully, but the Eng- 
lish were suspicious of cheapness and declined to adopt the 
new development. 

Thus the English, who up to about 1840, had led the 
world in the manufacture and sale of watches, began to fall 
behind. The American watch industry was then in its in- 
fancy, and the French industry had never been of any 
great size. The Swiss gradually drew ahead until they prac- 
tically gained control of the world's market for watches. 
Switzerland became known as the place from which 
watches came, and, very much as "Havana" stands for a 
fine cigar, so a fine watch was apt to be called a 
"Geneva." 

This, then, was the situation at about the middle of the 
nineteenth century when watchmaking in America was be- 
ginning to grow into a large industry. The French had al- 
ways made good watches and very beautiful and elaborate 
ones too, but they never made very many. The English 
were falling behind so far that it was said, in 1870, that 
half the watchmakers' tools in England were in pawn. The 
Swiss were in control of the business, making both the best 



1 




The Swiss "Manufacturer" and a Craftsman 

In former days, Swiss workmen made some particular watch 

part in their own homes, while so-called ^'manufacturers'^ bought 

the parts and ^'assembled'' the watches. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

.... ihe British would have none of it. Their nation., 
bulldog quahty set its teeth on the old idea that had giver, 
them their heavy, substantial, accurate watches, and hw) 
on grimly. The Swiss watches might be lighter and m 
graceful but they questioned their lasting qualities, "j. i, 
Swiss could make watches more beautifully, but the Eng 
lish were suspicious of cheapness and declined to adopt th' 
new development. 

Thus the English, who up to about 1840, had led tht 
world in the manufacture and sale of watches, began to fait 
behind. The American watch industry was then in its in 
fancy, and the French industry had never been of any 
great size. The Swiss gradually drew ahead until they prac- 
tically gained control of the world's market for watches 
Switzerland became known as the place from wh*"^*^ 
watches came, and, very much as "Havana" stands foi . 
fine cigar, so a fine watch was apt to be called ^ 
"Geneva." 

This, then, was the situation at about the middle of the 
nineteenth century wb< * '^^chmaking in America was be- 
ginning to grow into 'dustry. The French had a. 
ways made good watci; ; very beautiful and elaborate 
ones too, but they never made very many. The English 
were falling behind so far that it was said, in 1870, thai 
half the watchmakers' tools in England were in pawn. The 
Swiss were in control of the business, making both the best 

VLAMZT^ArO a aVLA ''RSJltMM^AM'' 88iw2 3hT 



What Happened in France and Switzerland 

and the worst watches in the world and by far the greatest 
number. Everywhere a good watch was still too costly to 
be owned by anyone of moderate means, while cheap 
watches were little more than toys which could not be 
depended upon either to wear well or to keep good time. 

In spite of all developments, therefore, there still re- 
mained the need both for a high-grade watch at a reason- 
able price and for a cheap watch that would be accurate 
under rough usage. These things were genuinely necessary, 
for the world was growing steadily away from the theory 
of special privilege, and the requirements of the average 
man were becoming more insistent. 

From those early days, when the astrologers in Mesopo- 
tamia had kept their knowledge a secret for themselves, 
down through more than forty centuries, only a few had 
possessed the means of accurately telling time; but now 
had come the railroad, the telegraph, the modern factory, 
the newspaper and many other developments which 
speeded up the movements of humanity in the rush and 
whirl of modern life until it had become absolutely neces- 
sary that the means of measuring and performing those 
movements in an economical manner should be within the 
reach of every man. 

It remains to be shown how American watchmaking dis- 
covered this need and organized to meet it; how it found 
and filled the gap that had been left in foreign watchmak- 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

ing, between high-priced watches that were good, and low- 
priced watches that were not good; how it developed a 
cheaper good watch and a better low-priced one than the 
world had so far known; and how, in so doing, the Ameri- 
can industry has grown within the memory of living men 
to such an extent as to take second place, and, in many 
respects, first place in watchmaking throughout the world. 



-&I460* 




CHAPTER TWELVE 

How <:iAn American Industry Qame 
On Horseback 

T LAST the clock industry came to America, and 
it came on horseback. If you had been upon a 
dusty country road in Connecticut about the 
year 1800, you might have seen a plainly dressed young 
man come riding along with a clock strapped to each side 
of his saddle and a third fastened crosswise behind him. 

"Hello, Eli Terry!" you might have heard some farmer 
sing out, as the rider drew near. 

"Hello, Silas," the other would call back; "don't you 
think it's about time you bought a clock.?" 

"Can't afford it, Eli; it takes me a long time to make 
forty dollars raising wheat." 

"Yes; but you can't afford to be without one, Silas." 
And, dismounting, he would unstrap one of the clocks and 
bring it up to the stone wall. Then would follow the period 
of bargaining, so dear to the shrewd, hard-headed sons of 
Connecticut. Perhaps when young Terry climbed back into 
the saddle and said "Gid-dap," one of his clocks would stay 
behind with the farmer. Like most successful salesmen, 
Terry was a close observer of human nature; he knew that 

«S 147 B* 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

habits once formed are hard to break. He discovered early 
that if a prospective customer could be made to depend 
upon a clock for telling time, the clock would soon sell it- 
self. One day, during a rain-storm, he sought refuge in a 
farmer's home. He brought in with him one of his clocks 
and placed it on the mantel over the fireplace, explaining 
that he would like to leave it there, where it would not get 
wet, while he continued on his journey. 

"I'll be back for it in a few days," he said, as he waved 
good-by. 

When Terry returned, some days later, the farmer real- 
ized that the clock, which he had first regarded as an ex- 
travagance had somehow become a necessity, and, with 
no urging on Terry's part, the sale was quickly completed. 

Some of the original clocks are still running in the very 
farmhouses where Eli Terry succeeded in selling them, and 
where they have ticked off the minutes of American history 
since the days of Adams and Jefferson. They were truly 
remarkable clocks, in spite of the fact that their works 
were cut out of hard wood with country tools, and put to- 
gether by a carpenter. 

The first American clocks were made of wood, and most 
of the early clockmakers were at first carpenters. We have 
seen clockmakers developing from priests and astronomers 
and blacksmiths and locksmiths and jewelers; but here is 
a new gateway to the trade. This came about naturally 



How An American Industry Came on Horseback 

enough in a country where the cheapest and most plentiful 
material was wood, and where the carpenter and joiner was 
accustomed to constructing every possible thing of it. Eli 
Terry of Connecticut was one of the best known of these 
early New England craftsmen. He was born in East 
Windsor, just a few years before the Revolution. By the 
time that he was twenty, he had made a few clocks, cutting 
the wheels out of hard wood with saw and file, and making 
wooden hands, dials, and cases. Then he moved to Ply- 
mouth, not far from Waterbury, and set up a small shop 
where he employed several workmen. They would make a 
dozen or two at a time, entirely by hand. Then Terry 
would take these out and sell them, sometimes as far as the 
"new country" across the New York state line. 

It took a long time to make a clock in this way, even for 
fingers that were as clever as Terry's, and it is no wonder 
that he was compelled to charge from twenty to forty dol- 
lars apiece, a sum, which, by-the-way, would be equal to 
at least four times as much to-day according to the differ- 
ence in the purchasing power of money. We must remem- 
ber, too, that a family then bought its clock as it bought a 
wagon or a spinning-wheel, almost as a man buys his 
house to-day. Certainly it was a far more important trans- 
action relatively than the purchase of a motor-car. 

Probably, if one could have overheard some of these 
roadside clock-sales it would have been noted that the 

•6-149^ 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

bargaining was not all upon one side, for there was not a 
great deal of money in circulation, and people were very- 
apt to "swap." Likely as not, Terry would have to take his 
payment in lumber, in clothing, or in some other commod- 
ity and these, in turn, he would dispose of when an oppor- 
tunity presented itself. This was more or less the type of 
the old horseback Yankee trader of the days when men 
still remembered the Revolutionary War. These were 
the days when a man who produced some one thing might 
be forced, in order to realize on its value, to trade it for al- 
most anything else. 

When we think of the early American timepiece, we gen- 
erally picture to ourselves the so-called "Grandfather's 
Clock," the kind with the tall case which Longfellow wrote 
about as standing on a turning in the stair and ticking 
away: "Forever!" "Never!" "Never!" "Forever!" as it 
marked the passage of the years. But Eli Terry, the first of 
all American clock-makers, could not well carry such a big 
contrivance with him on his horseback trips; therefore, 
while he made the works for these clocks, he left it for 
other people to construct the cases; the clocks which he 
sold complete were those which could stand upon a shelf or 
hang upon the wall. 

After a time, his orders increased to a point where he 
felt justified in moving into an old water-power mill and 
rigging machinery to do some parts of the work. Thus we 



How An American Industry Came on Horseback 

find machinery used in American clock-making almost from 
the beginning of the industry. Terry thus was a real manu- 
facturer; he had grasped the importance of machine pro- 
duction in contrast to hand-craftsmanship. 

The move paid; it cut the cost of making nearly in half 
and greatly increased the output. He now could afford to 
sell his clocks more cheaply, and the business grew at once. 
After a while he began to make clocks in lots of one or two 
hundred and then, indeed, his neighbors shook their heads 
gravely. 

*'You are losing your mind, Eli," they told him, in sol- 
emn warning. "The first thing you know, the country will 
be so full of clocks that there will be no market for them. 
You are getting reckless and ruining your business." 

But Eli Terry followed his own judgment instead of that 
of the croakers; before he died he was making ten or 
twelve thousand clocks in a year and was selling them too. 
They brought him a fortune. 

Thus was the industry of making timepieces born in 
America. It began in New England, which is still the chief 
center of manufacture, and it began with clocks, not 
watches, for the simple reason that in those days, a watch 
was a luxury whereas a clock was a necessity. Like the 
watch industry in Switzerland, American clock-making 
was an active business from the start, and, as we have seen, 
the man with whom it started was a typically Yankee 

*&iSis- 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

combination of ingenious mind, skilful fingers, and a 
knack for business. 

Of course, the conditions of life in America at that time 
had a great deal to do with methods used in building up the 
industry. Instead of a civilization centuries old that had 
wealth, rank, royalty, and a complete organization of all 
methods of living, here was a new country learning to do 
things in its own way. 

It is hard for us to imagine the conditions which pre- 
vailed when our whole population was a mere fringe of 
scattered settlements along the Atlantic seaboard; when 
people made long trips on horseback or by stage-coach and 
men wore powdered wigs and knickerbockers; when New 
York was a small town on the lower end of Manhattan 
Island, and Chicago had not even been dreamed of. Still, 
it was necessary to tell time, and our thrifty ancestors 
needs must watch the minutes in order to save them as 
thriftily as they saved everything else. Not one person out 
of hundreds, in a country where a living must be wrung 
from the soil by means of hard work, could afford to own 
anything so expensive as a watch, but every one felt it nec- 
essary to have a clock, if possible, and it became one of 
the greatest treasures of the home. 

This, then, was the market in which Terry and those 
who followed him had to sell. It was a market that could 
not afford to pay for ornament but desired practical service 




The First Yankee Clock Maker 

Eli 'Terry^ America s first clock ma^iufacturer, peddled his 
wares amotig the shrewd, hard-headed sons of Co7inecticut. 



Time Celling Through the Ages 

combination of ingenious mind, skilful fingers, and a 
knack for business 

Of course, the conditions of life in America at that time 
had a great deal to do with methods used in building up the 
industry. Instead of a civilization centuries old that had 
wealth, rank, royalty, and a complete organization of all 
methods of living, here was a new country learning to do 
things in its own way. 

It is hard for us to imagine the conditions which pre- 
vailed when ou! whole population was a mere fringe of 
scattered settlements along the Atlantic seaboard; when 
people made long trips on horseback or by stage-coach and 
men wore powdered wigs and knickerbockers; when New 
York was a small town on tb ' * Manhattan 

Island, and Chicago had not even Dcen arcamed of. Still, 
it was necessary to tell time, and our thrifty ancestors 
needs must watch the minutes in order to save them as 
thriftily as they saved everything else. Not one person out 
of hundreds, in a countr>^ where a living must be wrung 
from the soil by means of hard work, could afford to own 
anything so expensive as a watch, but every one felt it nec- 
essary to have a clock, if possible, and it became one of 
the greatest treasures of the home. 

This, then, was the market in which Terry and those 
who followed him had to sell. It was a market that could 
not afford to pay for ornament but desired practical service 

iI33AM 30Oj0 ^^^4Y T8illi; 3hT 



Hozu An American Industry Came on Horseback 

at low cost. What was needed, therefore, was a clock that 
would keep time and cost not a cent more than was abso- 
lutely necessary. The American industry was forced to 
start upon a basis entirely different from that of Europe. 

As Eli Terry's business grew, he needed assistance, and 
he secured the help of a young mechanic named Seth 
Thomas from West Haven, and the two worked together 
for some time. 

The name of Seth Thomas has appeared upon so many 
clock-dials that it is perhaps the best known name in all 
American clock-making. He was a good mechanic, and a 
good business man, and he had ideas of his own about in- 
creasing trade. In the course of time, about the year 1800, 
he and a man named Silas Hoadley bought the original 
Terry factory in the old mill, and set up business for them- 
selves. Terry, however, established himself elsewhere and 
continued to manufacture clocks. 

Thus the industry was growing; there were now two 
factories instead of one. Seth Thomas prospered by adopt- 
ing each popular fashion or improvement in clocks as it 
came along and applying it upon as large a scale and as 
honestly and well as could be done. He built up such a rep- 
utation that even to-day, while the name of Seth Thomas 
on a clock face does not suggest any particular form or 
style of clock, it is associated with good time keeping and 
honest workmanship. 

•6153^ 



'T'lme 'Telling 'T'hrough the Ages 

The third of the famous old New England clock-makers 
was Chauncey Jerome. He was a man younger than Terry 
and Thomas by nearly a generation. Like both of his pre- 
decessors he was brought up to the carpenter's trade, and 
like both of them he was a born New England trader. But 
of the three, Jerome was perhaps most the inventor and 
least the man of business. As a boy, he worked for Seth 
Thomas when Thomas was still building barns and houses. 
He worked for Eli Terry in the old shop at Plymouth. 
Then, after a period of soldiering in the War of 1812, he 
went back to clock-making, sometimes manufacturing by 
himself and sometimes associated with one or the other of 
the two older men, or in other firms and enterprises too 
numerous to follow. Always he seems to have been some- 
what of a rolling stone, although in his time he gathered as 
much moss as the best of them: always he was inclined to 
experiment with new ideas. 

Jerome's carpentering skill caused him to be first inter- 
ested in the making of cases, and most of the familiar 
forms of old American clocks — the square clock with pil- 
lars at the corners and a scroll top, the clock with a mirror 
underneath the dial and the like, were designed by Terry 
and Jerome between them. Later on, when the establish- 
ment of brass foundries in Waterbury and Bristol had 
enabled American makers to construct their work of brass 
instead of wood, Jerome worked out a design for a brass 



How An American Industry Came on Horseback 

one-day timepiece in a wooden case, small enough for 
easy transportation, and cheaper than any clock ever 
made up to that time. Its price at first, near the place of 
manufacture, was only five or six dollars, but afterwards 
this was reduced. 

This low-priced clock was as remarkable in its way as 
was the dollar watch, which it foreshadowed. And like the 
watch, it would not have been possible except through 
machine work and quantity production. It was a success at 
once and Jerome's business rapidly increased. In 1840, he 
was established in Bristol, turning out the new clocks by 
the thousand, and rapidly making a fortune. A year or two 
later, he decided to send a consignment of them to England. 

Again, people shook their heads and prophesied failure. 
"You're losing your mind, Chauncey," they told him as 
they had told Eli Terry before him. 

The older wooden movements could not, of course, en- 
dure a sea voyage without swelling and becoming useless. 
A brass movement could, of course, be sent anywhere, and 
some of the more expensive ones had been shipped to all 
parts of the country, yet it seemed absurd enough to send 
American clocks to England where labor was so cheap — to 
England, which was then the chief clockmaker of the 
world. Nevertheless, Jerome persevered, and his son sailed 
for London with a cargo of the cheap clocks. At first, the 
English trade would have none of them. No clock so cheap 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

could possibly be good, they said, and Connecticut was the 
home of **the wooden nutmegs." It was only after great 
difficulty that they were introduced. Young Jerome got rid 
of the first few by leaving them about in retail stores, ask- 
ing no payment for them until sold. 

The enterprise was saved by an event which was a joke 
in itself. The English revenue law at that time permitted 
the owner of imported goods to fix their taxable value. 
But the government could take any such property upon 
payment of a sum ten per cent greater than the owner's 
valuation. Jerome's clocks were valued at their wholesale 
price, and were presently seized by the customs officials 
on the ground that this valuation was fraudulently low. 

The elder Jerome chuckled upon learning of this. He was 
well satisfied to have closed out his first cargo at ten per 
cent profit, and at once sent over another shipment 
which was taken over by the customs as promptly as the 
first. But by the time the third consignment arrived, 
enough of the clocks had been sold to establish a demand 
for them among the retailers, and the officials finally con- 
ceded that the low price might be a reasonable one after all. 

Jerome was not at the height of his prosperity. He had 
the largest and probably the most profitable clock business 
in the country; and, in the few years following, his product 
was exported to all parts of the world. Then the Bristol 
factory burned down and he moved to New Haven, where 

-&iS69- 



How An American Industry Came on Horseback 

the Jerome Manufacturing Company enjoyed a brief 
period of great success. The business was constantly ex- 
tended, and the wholesale price of the cheap brass clocks 
was brought as low as seventy-five cents. This figure seems 
almost impossibly low for the time, but the authority for it 
is Jerome's own autobiography. 

A few years before the Civil War, the Jerome Company 
failed and, curiously enough, this failure came about 
through its connection with that usually successful man, 
P. T. Barnum, the famous showman. The story is too much 
complicated to be given here in detail, but it seems that 
Barnum had become heavily interested in a smaller clock 
company, which was merged with the Jerome concern. 
The overvaluation of its stock, combined with misman- 
agement and speculation among the officials of the Jerome 
Company, served to drive the whole business into bank- 
ruptcy. Barnum lost heavily, and it took him years to clear 
up his obligations. Jerome never did recover from it; after 
some years of failing power in the employ of other manu- 
facturers, he died in comparative poverty. 

His long and eventful life spans the whole growth of the 
American clock business from the days of Eli Terry and his 
handsawed wooden movements down to the maturity of 
the modern business supplying, by factory methods and 
the use of specialized machinery, millions of clocks to all 
parts of the world. He had made clocks all over Connecti- 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

cut, in Plymouth, Farmington, Bristol, New Haven and 
Waterbury, as well as in Massachusetts and, for a time, in 
South Carolina and Virginia. He had worked with his 
hands for Terry and Seth Thomas at the old wooden wheels 
and veneered cases, which were peddled about the country 
and sold for thirty or forty dollars each to be the treasured 
timekeepers of many households. And he had headed a 
modern factory, turning out dollar clocks by the tens of 
thousands. 

It is said that a child in the first few years of its life lives 
briefly through the whole evolution of civilized mankind. 
That "infant industry," American clock-making, likewise, 
in the short space of fifty years passed through most of the 
steps of the whole growth of time-recording between the 
Middle Ages and our own era. This country stands now 
among the leading clock-making nations of the world; itS| 
product is famous in every land and a timepiece froi 
Waterbury or New Haven may mark the minutes in the 
town from which Gerbert was banished for sorcery because 
he made a time-machine, or in that land between the rivers 
where the Babylonians first looked out upon the stars. 

Most of the American clocks are still made in Connecti- 
cut; in fact, more than eighty per cent of the whole world's 
supply (excluding the German) comes from the Naugatuck 
Valley. The New Haven Clock Company, which is the 
successor of the Jerome Company, is to-day one of the 



How An American Industry Came on Horseback 

largest. As far back as 1860, it was producing some two 
hundred thousand clocks a year. The Seth Thomas Com- 
pany and others of the historic concerns are still at work in 
various portions of the state. And the Benedict & Burnham 
Company, with which, at one time, Chauncey Jerome was 
associated, became the Waterbury Clock Company, now 
regarded as the largest clock producer, and of which we 
shall hear more later on. 

The key-note of the whole development was that new 
principle which American invention, prompted and 
stimulated by the pressing necessities of a new nation, 
brought into the business of time-recording — the principle 
of marvelously cheapening production-costs without loss 
of efficiency, through the systematic employment of 
machinery on a large scale. 

As long as the inventive brains and the technical knowl- 
edge of the old-time craftsman found expression only 
through his own fingers, the results would be limited to 
his individual production, and the costs would be propor- 
tionately high. When, however, the master mind was able 
to operate through rows of machines, each under the 
supervision of a mechanic trained to its particular 
function, his inventive genius was provided with ten thou- 
sand hands and a hundred thousand fingers. Furthermore, 
the production gained in quality as well as in quantity, 
because of specialization, all the time its costs were in 

-§159^ 



^ime Celling 'Through the Ages 

process of reduction. This, perhaps, has been America's 
chief contribution, not only to the making of timepieces, 
but, also to the world's industry in general. 



-&i6o3» 




Lnglish Clock 

about 1700 — Floral 

Marquetry in Walnut 

Ground 





'^^^ 




i™ 








American 
Black Walnut on Pine 
Eighteenth Century 




''Grandfather's Clocks 

These huge but beautiful clocks represent the most reliable 

form of timepiece known to the people of the Seventeenth and 

Eighteenth Centuries. In the Metropolitan Museum. 



bnuoiO 



:jl3oI3 nEohamA 
9ni4 no JunlfiW io£l9 






CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

^America J^arns to <J^a^e Watches 

WHILE Eli Terry was sawing wood for his curi- 
ous clocks back in the early days of the nine- 
teenth century, Luther Goddard, America's 
first watch-manufacturer, was preaching the Gospel to the 
town and country-folk in Massachusetts and Connecticut. 
Between sermons he repaired watches. 

Although we can find no record of such a meeting, it is 
easy to imagine that while plodding along some dusty 
country road Preacher Goddard met Terry jogging along 
with his cumbersome wooden clocks hanging from his 
saddle. The thought may have come to the minister- 
mechanic that it would be much easier to peddle watches 
than clocks. 

Whatever may have been the prompting, we find, as a 
matter of record, that, in the year 1809, while Terry was 
making and peddling his clocks, Luther Goddard set up a 
small watch-making shop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, 
the place of his birth. He employed watch-makers who had 
learned their trade in England. At that time, there was a 
law in force which prohibited the importation of foreign- 
made watches into America and this gave Goddard his 

*&i6is- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

chance. But in 1815, when the law was repealed and the 
American market was quickly flooded with cheaper, if not 
better watches from abroad, he was forced to retire from 
the field. During those few years he had produced about 
five hundred watches. 

Discouraged by his venture into worldly affairs, he 
turned again to his former occupation of preacher and 
evangelist, and consoled himself with the remark that he 
"had here a profession high above his secular vocation." 
In those days, protection and free trade had not yet be- 
come the rival rallying cries of two great political parties; 
otherwise we might have found this early manufacturer 
entering politics instead of the pulpit. While he is credited 
with manufacturing the first American watches, however, 
it is doubtful whether he and his workmen really did more 
than to assemble imported parts. 

More than twenty years now passed before another ef- 
fort was made to produce watches in America — this time 
by two brothers — Henry and James F. Pitkin of Hartford, 
Connecticut. In 1838, they brought out a watch, most of 
the parts of which were made by machinery, but it proved 
more or less a failure. After a brief struggle, they gave up 
in discouragement. Henry Pitkin died in 1845, and his 
brother, a few years later. 

While the Pitkin Brothers were struggling with their 
problem in Hartford, Jacob D. Custer of Norristown, 

♦&l62B* 



America Learns to Make Watches 

Pennsylvania, was engaged in a similar task. He succeeded 
in making a few watches between 1840 and 1845, thus 
gaining his niche in history as the third American watch 
manufacturer. 

But all of these were merely forerunners, for now there 
stepped upon the stage a young man whose ability and 
perseverance were destined to launch American watch- 
making fairly upon its way. This young man was born in 
Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1813, and his name was 
Edward Howard; it was born in him to be an inventive and 
ingenious craftsman and to feel toward the mechanism of 
time-keeping the devotion of an artist to his art. At the 
age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to Aaron Willard, Jr., 
of Roxbury, one of the cleverest clock-makers of his time. 

Young Howard took to clock-making as naturally as a 
Gloucester man takes to the sea. Some ofthe clocks he then 
made are still ticking as vigorously as ever. Having pres- 
ently learned all he cared to know about clock-making, he 
cast about for other fields of action. His bent, as he himself 
said, "was all for the finer and more delicate mechanism," 
and it was natural that these qualities of the watch should 
absorb his interest. It was equally natural, since he was an 
American clock-maker at a time when that trade was being 
revolutionized by machine-work, that he should dream of 
applying such methods to the watch. 

"One difficulty I found," he is quoted as saying, "was 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

that watch-making did not exist in the United States as an 
industry. There were watchmakers, so-called, at that time, 
and there are great numbers of the same kind now, but 
they never made a watch; their business being only to clean 
and repair. I knew from experience that there was no ; 
proper system employed in making watches. The work 
was all done by hand. Now, hand-work is superior in 
many of the arts because it allows variation according to ;l 
the individuality of the worker. But in the exquisitely fine 
wheels and screws and pinions that make up the parts of a 
watch, the less variation the better. Some of these parts I 
are so fine as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. A var- 
iation of one five-thousandths of an inch would throw the j 
watch out altogether, or make it useless as a timepiece. As 
I say, all of these minute parts were laboriously cut and | 
filed out by hand, so it will readily be understood that in i 
watches purporting to be of the same size and of the same 
makers, there are no two alike, and there was no inter- 
changeability of parts. Consequently it was *cut and try'. 
A great deal of time was wasted and many imperfections 
resulted." 

Howard's ambition lay in the production of a perfect 
watch for its own sake; and he wanted to make it by ma- 
chinery, believing that, in that way, it could be made most 
perfectly. Other people had thought of the same thing. 
Pitkin had attempted it, and there had been some experi- 



America Learns to Make Watches 

ments of like nature in Switzerland. But the man who loves 
his work as Howard did will succeed in anything short of 
the impossible, because neither time nor labor, neither 
failure nor discouragement, matter at all to him as against 
the hope of making his dream come true. 

As Howard was emerging into young manhood, the 
great period of American invention was rapidly develop- 
ing. Morse was struggling with the electric telegraph which 
he invented and perfected in 1835, and Goodyear was busy 
with machinery and processes for enabling rubber to be 
used commercially, thus laying the foundation for one of 
the greatest American industries of to-day. Ingenuity was 
in the air and invention was conquering realms that had 
been believed beyond reach. 

When people told Howard that it was absurd to think 
of improving upon the manual skill of centuries, he an- 
swered that he expected to make his machinery by hand. 
And when they said that a machine for watch-making 
would be more wonderful than the watch itself, he only 
laughed and agreed that this might be so. 

To-day, we are familiar with such phrases as "standard- 
ized parts'' and "quantity production," which explain to 
us how it is possible for a single factory to produce millions 
of watches in a year, or for another kind of plant to turn 
out half a million automobiles in a like period. The way in 
which "quantity production" came about is curiously in- 



Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

teresting. Watch-making received one of its greatest im- 
pulses from a famous American inventor who probably 
would have been amazed had anyone told him that his 
idea upon quite another subject would some day help to 
put watches into millions of pockets. 

There is no particular connection between a cotton-gin 
and the "quantity production" of watches, but it is inter- 
esting to know that the same ingenious brain which de- 
signed the one also unconsciously suggested the other. Late 
in the eighteenth century, Eli Whitney gained lasting 
fame as the inventor of a machine which would automatic- 
ally separate the seeds from the fiber of crude cotton — a 
machine which revolutionized the cotton industry of the 
south. 

In 1798, Whitney secured a contract to manufacture 
rifles for -the government. He decided that they could be 
made much more rapidly and cheaply if he could find some 
way to produce all the separate parts in large quantities by 
machinery, and then merely assemble the various parts into 
the completed weapon. The inventive mind which was 
capable of devising the cotton-gin found this new problem 
to be comparatively simple, and it was not long before 
Whitney was making thousands of rifles from machine- 
made "standardized parts," where only one could be made 
before. Half a century later his machinery was still turning 
out rifles parts in the great arsenal at Springfield, Massa- 

-§i66e* 



America Learns to Make Watches 

chusetts, and it was not until this period that it exerted a 
distinct influence upon watch-making. 

While Howard in Roxbury was dreaming of producing 
watches by machinery, another young man — ^Aaron L. 
Dennison, of Boston — ^was also obsessed with the same 
dream and grappling with the same problem. It is there- 
fore not strange that the paths of these two soon crossed. 
Born in Freeport, Maine, 1812, Dennison was just a year 
older than Howard. He was an expert watch-repairer and 
watch-assembler, having learned his craft among the Swiss 
and the English workmen in New York and Boston. The 
year 1845 found him conducting a small watch and jewelry 
business in Boston. 

Some few years earlier, Dennison had visited friends in 
Springfield, Massachusetts, and while there he was taken 
to one of the interesting show-places of the town — the 
Springfield Arsenal. As he made his slow progress through 
the great rifle factory, he marveled at the wonderful ma- 
chinery and the system which had originated in the brain 
of Eli Whitney nearly half a century before; Whitney was 
dead and gone, but his works still lived. 

Dennison returned to Boston, fired with an ambition to 
apply the Whitney system and methods of rifle-making to 
the manufacture of watches. He brooded over the scheme 
for yearSjConstructing a pasteboard model of his imaginary 
watch factory and planning in detail its organization. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

Then occurred a meeting that was to make history — a 
meeting marking the first step in founding a great Ameri- 
can industry and wresting from Europe and Great Britain 
the watch-making monopoly which they had continuously 
held since the days of the ''Nuremburg Egg." Dennison 
met Howard, and the contact of the two minds was like the 
meeting of flint and steel. Dennison shared Howard's belief 
that watch-parts could be made better and more accur- 
ately by the use of machines. He had the watch-making 
experience and Howard the mechanical skill to design the 
new machinery. One may imagine how the two young men 
inspired each other. They had the ideas; all they now 
needed was the capital and this was supplied in 1848 by 
Mr. Samuel Curtis, who backed them to the extent of 
twenty thousand dollars. 

Dennison immediately went abroad to study methods in 
England and Switzerland and came back more than ever 
convinced of the soundness of their own ideas. 

"I have examined," said he, "watches made by a man 
whose reputation at this moment is far beyond that of any 
other watchmaker in Great Britain and have found in 
them such workmanship as I should blush to have it sup- 
posed had passed from under my hands in our own lower 
grade of work. Of course I do not mean to say that there 
is not work in these watches of the highest grade possible, 
but errors do creep in and are allowed to pass the hands of 

*&i683- 




Eighteenth Century Watches 

Reached the extreme of elaboration and costliness, but were not 
always equally successful as time keepers. In the collections 
of the Metropolitan Museum. 



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America Learns to Make Watches 

competent examiners. And it needs but slight acquaint- 
ance with our art to discover that the lower grade of 
foreign watches are hardly as mechanically correct in their 
construction as a common wheelbarrow." 

On his return, in 1850, he and Howard established them- 
selves in a small factory in Roxbury, under the name of the 
American Horologe Company. And that little factory was 
the foundation of what is now the great establishment of 
the Waltham Watch Company, the first and hence the 
oldest watch company in America, and the parent concern 
of most of the rest. 

It was perhaps at this time that an employee, one P. S. 
Bartlett, returned to his home town on a visit and was 
asked by his old neighbors what he had been doing. 

"I am working," said he, "for a company which makes 
seven complete watches in a day." Great was the merri- 
ment at this reply. "Why, where on earth could you sell 
seven watches a day?" they shouted. 

With the advent of the factory, the real troubles of 
Dennison and Howard began. It is worth while to glance 
for a moment at the problem which lay before them, if only 
to appreciate its difficulty. The old plan was to have a 
model watch made by hand by a master workman. This 
watch was then taken apart and its separate parts dis- 
tributed for reproduction by a multitude of specialized 
workers involving perhaps some forty or fifty minor 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

trades. These parts, hand-made after a hand-made model, 
were then returned to the expert who assembled and ad- 
justed them. At the worst, this resulted in gross error; at 
the best, in individual variation. A part from one watch 
could not be expected to fit and work accurately in an- 
other, although the two were supposed to be alike in all 
their parts. 

The new idea was first to lay out the whole design on 
paper and then to make the various parts by machinery 
according to the exact design. It was supposed that a ma- 
chine making one part would duplicate that part repeat- 
edly without variation; that in so far as the machines 
themselves were accurate, the parts produced would neces- 
sarily be interchangeable; that any set of parts could 
therefore be assembled without fitting or alteration. The 
finished watch, it was assumed, would require adjustment 
only. Theoretically, this idea was correct; practically, it 
could not be perfectly carried out, and the results did not 
fulfil the hopes of the manufacturers. In the first place, 
there were not in existence any machines of the required 
delicacy and precision; every one must first be invented, 
then designed, then made, and finally adjusted for practi- 
cal operation. Even so, and notwithstanding the great 
mechanical achievements of the Waltham Company, the 
results never succeeded in realizing the dreams of Howard 
and Dennison, of absolute interchangeability of parts. It 



America Learns to Make Watches 

remained for the IngersoU organization, many years later, 
to develop such a factory system. 

Before Howard and Dennison could make a single 
watch, therefore, they had to invent all the mechanism, 
and themselves build and install every invention. More- 
over, several of the processes had to be worked out from 
the ground up. There was nobody in America who under- 
stood watch-gilding, for example, or who could make dials 
or jewels. 

Thus they set to work developing the machinery as fast 
as they could do so, and imported such parts as they them- 
selves could not yet make. It was a staggering task and a 
discouraging devourer of capital. "I do not think," said 
Dennison many years later, "there were seven times in the 
seven years we were together that we had money enough to 
pay all our employees at the time their wages were due. 
Very often we would find ourselves without any cash on 
hand, but Mr. Howard would manage some way to pro- 
duce enough to tide over with." 

The two men made a perfect team, eager to give each 
other credit, and each having unbounded loyalty and con- 
fidence in the other and in their enterprise. But, curiously 
enough, it was Howard, the artist and dreamer, who seems 
to have developed into the business man of the two, in ad- 
dition to being the inventor and engineer, whereas Denni- 
son, the expert watch-repairer, became the designer and 

*&I7IB* 



I'ime Telling trough the Ages 

originator of plans. It was said of him long afterward that 
there was probably never an idea in American watch- 
making that had not at some time passed through Mr. 
Dennison's resourceful mind. He is known to many as the 
"Father of the American Watch Industry," although he in- 
sisted that Howard deserved the title as much if not more 
than he. Dennison schemed out what was to be done, while 
Howard found the money and invented the machinery 
with which to do it. 

Their first model, an eight-day watch, was Dennison's 
idea. It was found to be impracticable and was soon aban- 
doned in favor of a one-day model. The name of the com- 
pany had to be changed, because it did not find favor with 
some of the English firms from whom they bought certain 
parts. They called it the "Warren Manufacturing Com- 
pany" for a time, and their first few watches were marked 
with this name. Later on, they moved to a new factory at 
Waltham and incorporated under the name of the Wal- 
tham Improvement Company. It was while the act for its 
incorporation was before the Massachusetts legislature 
that some wag there produced the couplet : 

"lA Waltham* 'patent* watch, which ere it goes 
'besides the 'hands'' must have the 'ayes* and 'noes** 

All this time, the tools and machinery were giving trou- 
ble. There were innumerable difficulties. For example, New 
England workmen objected to cutting the pinion-leaves 



America Learns to Make Watches 

because they were shaped like a bishop's miter. And finan- 
cial pressure was always upon them. The building was one 
of the earliest attempts at concrete construction, and was 
far from stable in stormy weather. Mr. Hull, afterward 
foreman in the dial-room, said: "Often in those days we 
would jump from our stools when we felt something jar, 
for fear the building would fall down. Somehow, it never 
did." 

In 1854 the name was changed again, this time to the 
American Watch Company. Incidentally, Mr. Dennison 
took his place among the large and honorable company of 
inventors who have been called insane. He earned that title 
by saying that they would eventually make as many as 
fifty watches a day. The company now makes between two 
thousand and three thousand a day. 

Just as they were on the point of a richly deserved suc- 
cess, the panic of 1857 drove the young company into 
bankruptcy. The plant was purchased by Royal E. Rob- 
bins, of the firm of Robbins & Appleton, watch importers. 
Howard went back to the old factory at Roxbury, taking 
with him a few trained workmen, and patiently started all 
over again. He succeeded, at last, in producing really fine 
watches, although in small numbers; and his new business, 
as we shall see later, developed into the E. Howard Clock 
Company, and practically abandoned the manufacture of 
watches. Meanwhile, the Waltham factory, under good 

•&I73B- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

business management and with Dennison as its superinten- 
dent, was safely steered past the financial rocks and shoals 
of the period, and began gradually to reap the reward of 
its less fortunate early efforts. 

It was the Civil War, with its great military demand for 
watches, which first set the Waltham Company squarely 
upon its feet by justifying quantity production. A divi- 
dend of five per cent was declared in 1860; and one of one 
hundred and fifty per cent in 1866, the short-lived Nashua 
Watch Company having meanwhile been absorbed. Since 
that date its name has been twice changed — first, to the 
American Waltham Watch Company, and then to the 
Waltham Watch Company, which is now its title. 

At the present day, the Waltham Company employs 
nearly four thousand people and produces about sixty- 
eight thousand complete watch-movements a month, or 
over three-quarters of a million a year. 

This output is made possible only through the extensive 
employment of automatic machines, all of which have been 
invented and manufactured at the Waltham factory. 
Even now it is not possible to buy watch-making machinery 
ready-made in the open market; it is all "special" work, 
designed and often built by the watch manufacturers 
themselves And the development of this great industry, 
employing, at first, crude devices operated for the most 
part by hand-power, to the complex automatic mechanism 

-ei74^ 



America Learns to Make Watches 

which seems to act almost with human intelligence, has 
been a marvelous achievement. 

The company now makes ten different sizes of regular 
movements, in more than a hundred different grades and 
styles. Of these every part is made in the Waltham fac- 
tory. It was the first establishment in the world in which 
all parts of a watch were made by machinery and under 
the same roof. And its success revolutionized the methods 
of watch-making not only in America but, to a less degree, 
in all parts of the world. A prominent London watch- 
maker who went through the plant in the early period of 
its success said to his colleagues : "On leaving the factory, 
I felt that the manufacture of watches on the old plan 
was gone." And the name passed into literature when 
Emerson, describing a successful type of man, said, "He 
is put together like a Waltham watch/* 



•ei75B- 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

Checkered History 

ONE of those mental marvels who can play fifteen 
simultaneous games of chess, blindfolded, might 
be able to form a complete idea of the American 
watch-making industry in the years that followed the Civil 
War; all that the ordinary mind can gain is a bewildering 
impression of change and confusion, with companies 
springing up, and merging or disappearing, all over the 
industrial map. Inventions were as thick as blackberries in 
August and, to investors, as thorny as their stems. Count- 
less revolutionary ideas in watch-making revolved briefly — 
few evolved, and capitalists, large and small, learned the 
sobering lessons of experience, as capitalists ever have and 
ever will. 

With it all, certain points seem to stand out as clearly 
defined — among them the fact that watch-production ap- 
pealed strongly to the public mind at a time when the 
nation, galvanized into intense activity by the great con- 
flict, was entering an era of extraordinary self-organiza- 
tion. This is, of course, significant. The nation's time as 
well as its forests, mines, and other resources, must be a 
factor in the growth of public wealth, and this could not be 

*&i76s- 



< 




"Quantity Production" in 1850 

When P. S. Bartlett boasted that his company was making 

seven watches a day, his friends laughed, "PFhy, where could 

you SELL seven watches a day?'' 



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Checkered History 

unless It were widely and accurately measured, which, in 
turn, implied the universal use of the watch. 

The later history of American watch-making is, there- 
fore, a story of the formation of many companies, the 
failure of most, and survival in the case of comparatively 
few. In the sense of being founded by men whose experi- 
ence had been gained at Waltham, the Waltham Company 
was more or less the parent of the majority. Of the failures, 
it may roughly and broadly be stated that the general 
trouble was most often a lack of cooperation between tech- 
nical watch-making skill and business management. 

Of the occasional successes due, on the other hand, to 
perfect harmony between these two factors, the Elgin Na- 
tional Watch Company, established at Elgin, Illinois, in 
1864, was one of the first. Its officials and promoters were 
not watchmakers but business men — a group of Western 
capitalists who organized the company at the suggestion of 
a few trained men from Waltham, to whose technical ex- 
perience and knowledge they gave entire liberty of action 
from the first. This combination of Western enterprise and 
Eastern mechanical skill Was a great and immediate suc- 
cess. Within six years from its incorporation, the Elgin 
Company had built its factory, designed and made its own 
machinery, and marketed forty-two thousand watches. It 
is said to be the only American watch company which has 
paid dividends from the beginning. And yet this achieve- 
rs I77^ 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

ment cannot be traced to anything strikingly distinctive 
either in the poHcy or in the product. It was a case of doing 
rapidly and easily, with vast previous experience to build 
upon, what the parent company had so long strived to ac- 
complish, and of doing this honestly and well. In a small 
way, it was like the rapid growth of democratic principles 
in America, having, as it were, the British commonwealth 
of a thousand years on which to base itself. 

The period of the development of American watch-mak- 
ing was also the period of the rapid and enormous expan- 
sion of railroads. The two were naturally related, in that 
railroading demands the constant use of a great number of m 
watches, while its progress in punctuality and speed is in 
direct proportion to the supply of reliable timekeepers. Pre- 
cision is here the great essential; every passenger must have 
the means of being on hand in time in order not to miss his 
train. But what is of far greater importance, railroad men 
must know and keep the exact time not alone for their own 
protection but in order that they may protect and safe- 
guard the lives of those who are entrusted to their care. 

Most of our great inventions and improvements can be 
traced to some pressing human need. Many of them, un- 
fortunately, are delayed until some great catastrophe 
shows the need. It required a disastrous wreck to bring 
home to the railroads and make clear the necessity for ab- 
solute accuracy in the timepieces of their employees. 

•&178B- 



Checkered History 

In the year 1891 two trains on the Lake Shore Railroad 
met in head-on collision near Kipton, Ohio, killing the two 
engineers and several railway mail-clerks. In the investiga- 
tion which followed, it was disclosed that the watches of 
the engineers differed by four minutes. The watch which 
was at fault had always been accurate and so its owner 
took it for granted that it always would be. But tiny par- 
ticles of dust and soot find ways of seeping into the most 
carefully protected works of a watch, and every watch 
should be examined and cleaned occasionally. So it was 
with the engineer's watch. A speck of coal dust, perhaps, 
had caused his watch to stop for a few minutes and then 
the jolting of the engine had probably started it running 
again. That little speck of dust and those few lost minutes 
cost human lives. 

This wreck occurred not many miles from Cleveland, 
Ohio, then and now the home of Webb C. Ball, a jeweler, 
who as a watch expert, was a witness in the investigation 
which followed. His interest thus aroused, he worked out a 
plan which provided for a rigid and continuous system of 
railroad watch inspection. The plan which he then pro- 
posed is now in operation on practically every railroad in 
the country. 

A railroad watch must keep accurate time within thirty 
seconds a week, and is likely to be condemned if its varia- 
tion exceeds that amount in a month; it must conform to 

*&I79^ 



^ime 'Telling 'Through the Ages 

certain specifications of design and workmanship which are 
only, put into movements of a fairly high grade. And the 
railroad man must provide himself with such a timepiece 
and maintain it in proper condition, subject to frequent 
and regular inspection bythe railroad's official inspector. 
There is thus a compulsory demand for watches of a defi- 
nite quality and performance at a reasonable price. 

Expressly to meet this, the Hamilton Watch Company, 
of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was organized in 1892, the 
year aifter the wreck which started this reform. This com- 
pany therefore represents an enterprise founded for a 
specific purpose and concentrating upon a certain special- 
ized demand, although this does not mean that it is the 
only company which caters to the needs of the railroad 
man. All of the great companies produce timekeepers of the 
highest precision for railroad use, but the Hamilton Com- 
pany has devoted itself more particularly to supplying 
this one field. 

The Gruen Watch Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio, is 
typical of still another line of endeavor — the beautifying 
and refining of watch-cases and watch-works. Its founder, 
Dietrich Gruen, was a Swiss master watchmaker. He came 
to America, as a young man, in 1876, married here, and 
established the international industry which bears his 
name. It might be said that his watch is not an American 
product, as the Gruen movements are made at Madre- 

•&1803- 



I 



Checkered History 

Biel, in Switzerland, and then sent over to America to be 
cased, adjusted, and marketed. Perhaps the most notable 
contribution of this company to the watchmaking industry- 
was to inaugurate the modern thin type of watch. This was 
evolved by Frederick, the son of Dietrich Gruen, and \vas 
made possible by the inverting of the third wheel of the 
watch, so that the whole train runs in much less space. than 
was previously required. 

These four companies arc by no means the only success- 
ful ones, but they do typify the general trend of develop- 
ment of the American watch industry from 1850 until near 
the end of the nineteenth century, when a new and even 
greater era in the history of timekeeping was inaugurated. 
The story of this development will be considered in later 
chapters. In the period then closed, however, the ideal of 
Dennison and Howard, which most people then regarded 
as an impossibility, was realized to a degree which they 
themselves would never have thought possible. Dennison 
died in 1898 and Howard in 1904. 

Although watch-making is the creation of European 
genius and was rooted in European experience, with 
boundless capital at its command and carried on in com- 
munities trained for generations in the craft, it is in this 
country that it has been brought to its fullest modern de- 
velopment. The census figures, while incomplete and some- 
what misleading, are expressive of the amount of growth 

-§l8iB- 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

and of its nature. According to these figures there were in 
1869 thirty-seven watch companies in the United States, 
employing eighteen hundred and sixteen wage earners, or 
an average of less than fifty workmen; and their com- 
bined product was valued at less than three million dollars. 
In 1914, the last normal year before the Great War, there 
were but fifteen such companies; the law of the survival of 
the fittest had been operating. But these fifteen employed 
an average of over eight hundred people, or twelve thou- 
sand three hundred and ninety in all, and the combined 
value of their product was stated as over fourteen million 
dollars. These figures are far below reality in that they do 
not include the large volume of watches produced in clock 
factories. 

American watch-making is typical of the difference be- 
tween the American and European industry in the nine- 
teenth century. Here a complete watch is produced in one 
factory, while in England, Switzerland and France most 
establishments specialize in the manufacture of particular 
parts and these parts are then assembled in other factories. 
Some fifty different trades there are working separately to 
produce the parts. And the manufacturer, whose work is 
chiefly that of finishing and assembling, takes a large profit 
for inspection and for the prestige of his name. 

By the American system, a thousand watches are pro- 
duced proportionately more cheaply than a dozen; and a 

•ei82B* 



Checkered History 

thousand of uniform model more cheaply than a like num- 
ber of various sizes and designs. Automatic machines tend 
to economy of labor and uniformity of excellence. The 
saving begins with the cost of material and ends with the 
ease and quickness of repairs due to the standardization of 
parts. 

Lord Grimthorpe said : "There can be no doubt that this 
is the best as well as the cheapest way of making machines 
which require precision. Although labor is dearer in Amer- 
ica than here, their machinery enables them to undersell 
English watches of the same quality." 

It now remained for American ingenuity and enterprise 
to level the ramparts of special privilege in the world of 
time-telling by producing an accurate and practical watch 
in sufficient quantity and at a price so low as to place it 
within the reach of all. 



•&I833- 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

'"The Watch That Wound Forever'''' 

THE most important development in any affair is 
naturally the one which concerns the greatest 
number of people. In the United States, it is the 
people who count and nothing can be considered wholly 
American which does not concern the mass of the popula- 
tion. We have already seen how watch-movements were 
brought to a high degree of accuracy, and have followed 
some of the steps by which the industry was developed in 
the United States, but there remained one great step to be 
taken, and that was the putting of an accurate watch with- 
in the financial reach of almost every person. The way 
in which this was brought about was thoroughly American. 
In 1875, Jason R^ Hopkins, of Washington, D. C, after 
many months of patient labor, perfected the model of a 
watch which he thought could be constructed in quantities 
for fifty cents each. He secured a patent on his model, and 
with Edward A. Locke, of Boston, and W. D. Colt, of 
Washington, sought to interest the Benedict & Burnham 
Manufacturing Company, of Waterbury, Connecticut, in 
its manufacture. 

Failing in this, Locke abandoned further effort so far as 



"The Watch That Wound Forever* 

the Hopkins* model was concerned. Hopkins, however, 
continued, and finally succeeded in enlisting the active 
support and financial resources of W. B. Fowle, a gentle- 
man of wealth and leisure, who owned a fine estate at 
Auburndale, Massachusetts. This led to the formation of 
the Auburndale Watch Company. Within a few years, 
Fowle had sunk his entire fortune of more than 3250,000 
in the enterprise, and the Hopkins watch had proved a 
complete failure. In 1883 both Fowle and the Watch 
Company made assignments. 

There are many who still remember the great Centennial 
Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, celebrating the one 
hundredth anniversary of the declaration of American 
Independence. Those who were there may recall the inter- 
esting exhibit of a huge steam-engine — at least, it seemed 
huge at that time — and, in a glass case near by, a tiny 
engine — so tiny that it could be completely covered by a 
small thimble. This midget steam engine, with its boiler, 
governor, and pumps, was just as complete in all of its 
parts as was the big engine. Three drops of water would fill 
its boiler. It was a striking example of mechanical skill and 
fineness of workmanship, for it had been made under a 
watchmaker's microscope with jeweler's tools. 

The most interesting thing about this little engine was 
that, unknown to its designer, it heralded the dawn of De- 
mocracy in the Kingdom of Time-telling, just as it then 

*&i85S* 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

was helping to celebrate the birth of American freedom. In 
the spring of 1877, Edward A. Locke, of Boston, who 
two years before, as we have seen, had been interested in 
the Hopkins' watch, visited the neighboring city of Wor- 
cester, and while strolling along the main street, in a lei- 
surely manner, he chanced to glance in the window of a 
watch-repairer's shop. There he saw the tiny engine which 
had excited so much wonder and admiration at the Phila- 
delphia exposition the year before. 

For many months, Locke and his friend George Merritt, 
of Brooklyn, New York, had been thinking and dreaming 
of the possibility of supplying the long-felt and rapidly- 
growing need for a low-priced watch — a pocket-timepiece 
that could be sold for three or four dollars. The cheapest 
watch in America at that time cost ten or twelve. They had 
searched in vain for a watchmaker who was ingenious or 
courageous enough, or both, to attempt the making of such 
a timepiece. 

Fascinated by the marvelous little engine, Locke stepped 
into the shop and spoke to the lone workman at the bench 
near the window. This obscure and humble watch repairer 
was D. A. A. Buck, the proprietor of the shop and de- 
signer of the engine, who was soon to gain renown as the 
inventor of the famous Waterbury watch. 

For the sum of one hundred dollars Buck agreed to study 
the problem, and, if possible, design for Locke a watch 

•&i86b* 



II 



"ne Watch T'hat Wound Forever' 

which would meet his requirements. Day and night, for 
many weeks, he labored at this task, and finally sub- 
mitted a model. It was not satisfactory. 

Worn by his labors and disappointed by his failure, he 
fell ill. Some days later, Mrs. Buck sought out Locke and 
joyfully told him that her husband had worked out a new 
design which he believed would correct the defects of the 
former model and that, as soon as he recovered, he would 
begin work upon it. Within a few months he had completed 
a second model. This time he was successful. 

Then began the struggle of Locke and his associates to 
interest capital in the new enterprise. Most of the pre- 
liminary funds and factory space were provided by the 
Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company, a brass 
manufacturing concern at Waterbury, Connecticut, and 
the predecessor of the present Waterbury Clock Company. 
Thus the new watch came to be known as the Waterbury. 

Within the next twenty-eight months many thousands 
of dollars had been raised and expended before a single 
watch could be turned out for sale. It was not until 1880 
that the Waterbury Watch Company was finally incor- 
porated and ready for business. Then the factory proudly 
produced its first thousand watches. They were perfectly 
good-looking watches, but they had one important weak- 
ness — they would not run, because, as it was found, the 
sheets of brass used in stamping out the wheels had an 

-&i87§- 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

unfortunate grain, and the wheels would not remain true. 
Another thousand were made with this defect corrected. 
This time most of the watches would keep time, but there 
still was a large percentage of "stoppers." After more 
study, experiment, and expense, the product was improved 
until only about ten per cent of the watches refused to run, 
and the Waterbury watch was really on the market. 

It was a wonderfully simple piece of mechanism, very 
different from the ordinary watch. The whole works turned 
round inside of the case once every hour, carrying the hour- 
hand with them. The mainspring was coiled round the 
outside of the movement, so that the case formed a barrel, 
and was wound by the stem. It had the old duplex escape-j 
ment of the days of Tompion and the dial was printed on! 
paper, covered with celluloid and glued to the plate. It] 
had only fifty-eight parts, kept time surprisingly well, was] 
not much to look at, but was sold at the then unheard-of 
low price of four dollars. 

It was put on the market with real Yankee ingenuity.! 
Some of us remember when Waterbury watches were given! 
away with suits of clothes, and the pride with which, asj 
youngsters, we exhibited our first watches thus obtainedj 
to our playmates who were less fortunate. The nine-fool 
mainspring required unlimited winding, which was one of 
its chief joys, and our friends often solicited the privilege 
of helping in the operation. Some of the more ingenious 

*&i88s* 



*'The Watch 'That Wound Forever* 

among us held the corrugated stem against the side of a 
fence and made the watch wind itself by running along the 
fence's length, while other children looked on enviously. 

In spite of the disadvantage of the time necessary for 
winding, perhaps in part because of it, the Waterbury 
watch became famous the world over and reached a very 
large sale for its day. It was more or less of a freak con- 
trivance. People spoke of it with a smile. Minstrels opened 
their performances by saying, "We come from Waterbury, 
the land of eternal spring"; and there is a story of a Water- 
bury owner in a sleeping-car, winding until his arm ached 
and then passing it to a total stranger, saying, "Here, you 
wind this for a while," with the result that the stranger 
placed a large order for Waterbury watches to be sold by 
his agency in China. 

At the time that the Waterbury watch was well estab- 
lished, the world had advanced to a point fairly approxi- 
mating the life of to-day. All the marvels of invention 
which had lifted so much of the earth's manual labor from 
the shoulders of mankind and which had been expected to 
shorten working-hours and to cheapen products until the 
standards of living of all classes would be raised through 
the possession of beneficial products inexpensively pro- 
duced — these had gone far toward establishing the factory 
system. Machinery had come into vogue in place of hand 
labor. The steam-engine, the sewing-machine, the rail- 



'Time 'Telling 'Through the Ages 

way, the steamboat, the cotton-gin, the threshing-machine 
and the harvester, were indispensable aids. Photography 
and typewriting were novelties no longer, and the phono- 
graph was becoming familiar. Electricity had taken its 
place as one of man's most valuable servants, able to 
transmit his messages, furnish him with power, and turn 
his night into day. These are but a few of the countless im- 
provements that had contributed to the rapid rise of this 
country as a manufacturing nation instead of one chiefly 
agricultural. I 

Millions had already found employment in the factories, 
the transportation systems, and other collective-labor 
establishments. Schools had multiplied throughout the 
country. Trains, for the most part, were run on schedule 
time. Business offices, accompanying the development of 
the great industrial concerns, employed thousands. The 
department store was beginning to appear. Public-utility 
organizations and government departments were growing 
complex and extensive. 

Thus, in every direction a stirring impetus was being 
given toward those intricate modern conditions which de- 
pend upon the watch. The lives of nearly all people were 
beginning to be touched by affairs that demanded common 
punctuality a number of times every day — the hour of 
opening factory, school, office or store, the keeping of ap- 
pointments, the closing of banks and of mails, and the 

•51903- 



"The Watch 'That Wound Forever" 

departure of trains. The times were bursting with need for 
a closer watch on time. From the industrial president to 
the common laborer and school-child the pressure of 
modern life, with its demand for punctuality, was making 
itself increasingly felt. 

Yet, strangely enough, watches were still regarded as 
luxuries. It was not yet realized that they belonged among 
the implements which the daily life required of all. The 
notion still held that the watch was the mark of the aristo- 
crat — a piece of jewelry rather than an article of utility, 
a thing more for display than for use. And the prices of 
good watches, according to the standards of the day, were 
such as to perpetuate the idea. 

It is no wonder then that, in spite of its crude character- 
istics, the low-priced Waterbury watch attained a consid- 
erable sale. A watch was a novelty, an uncommon posses- 
sion among average people, and anything approximating 
a real watch was assured of a large sale if within reach of 
the ordinary purse. Therefore, the commercial failure of 
the Waterbury Watch Company involves something more 
than a mere business failure. Here is something which text- 
book economists may well undertake to explain, since the 
article was good, the need unsupplied, the competition 
feeble, and the profit satisfactory. The Waterbury watch 
enjoyed an initial success but, in spite of satisfactory qual- 
ity, its sale gradually fell away, until, notwithstanding 

•fti9ie* 



'^ime 'Telling trough the Ages 

several refinancings and changes of management, unde- 
served failure ultimately overtook the first low-priced 
watch-venture. It was not the manufacturing problems, 
such as had overcome Howard and had sorely tried Den- 
nison, but the problems of distribution which were the 
undoing of the Waterbury Company, and here the im- 
portance and power of the middleman stand out in an 
instructive way. 

The conditions of the age demanded a cheap watch. 
Things to come could not eventuate except through the 
ability of everyone to measure his minutes. Almost from 
its first announcement, the Waterbury sprang into de- 
mand, but later succumbed to false policies of sales. Eager- 
ness for the large and easy orders, which were momentarily 
attractive but finally fatal, spelled ruin. 

When first put out, the watch was sold through stores at 
a very moderate price and proved to be such a sensation 
that it suggested itself to ingenious merchants as a trade- 
bringer when offered as a premium with other goods. 

Sam Lloyd, the famous puzzle-man, was among those 
who saw this possibility and he devised a scheme which 
resulted in the giving-away of hundreds of thousands of 
Waterburys; it consisted of puzzles printed on cards. These 
puzzles were so simple and yet so cleverly designed that 
while anyone could solve them, each thought himself a 
genius for his success in doing so. Lloyd's idea was to take 

-§1928- 



"jTA^ Watch T'hat Wound Forever'^ 

his puzzles to clothing stores all over the country and sell 
them with watches, in order that those dealers might dis- 
tribute the puzzles all over town, together with an an- 
nouncement of a guessing-contest. Each successful con- 
testant, upon return of the puzzle with its solution, was 
privileged to buy a suit of clothes and get a Waterbury 
watch with it free of charge. 

Such was the magic of a watch in those days that the 
Waterbury boomed the business of hundreds of clothiers, 
who, as in nearly all something-for-nothing schemes, were 
careful to add more than the cost of the watch to the price 
of the suit. Nevertheless the idea took so well that Lloyd 
spread it into Europe, China, and other parts of the world. 
Thus, the Waterbury watch became a familiar object in 
many lands. Adaptations of the scheme, applied to other 
wares, were carried out by him and by others until give- 
away propositions became the main channel of distribution 
for these watches. For a time, such methods flourished and 
the regular trade of ordinary watch-dealers correspond- 
ingly languished. But, finally, the scheme-idea lost its 
novelty and pulling power. People would not forever buy 
clothes in order to get watches. In the process, the Water- 
bury name had become a byword for tricks in all trades. 
Shoddy clothes at all-wool prices had become associated 
with it in people's minds. They stopped buying these 
watches in ordinary stores because others "gave" them 

•&193S* 



^ime Celling 'Through the Ages 

away. Regular dealers cut the prices to get rid of their 
stocks, and this led to further demoralization because cus- 
tomers never knew whether or not they were buying at the 
bottom price. Dealers could make no money on them under 
such market conditions and, because of this and of their 
shady association with give-away deals, the Waterbury 
name became a stench in the nostrils of the legitimate 
trade. 

Thus, when the scheme-trade died away and the com- 
pany again turned its attention to the watch-dealers whom 
it had forgotten in the flush of its easy success, it found no 
welcome. It had forsaken its source of steady customers 
and was now forsaken in return. After floundering about in 
several further reversals of trade policy and causing the 
loss of further investment for its backers, the Waterbury 
name was abandoned and the company reorganized as the 
New England Watch Company. As such it ventured into 
new fields of watch manufacture and off^ered an elaborate 
variety of small and fancy watches and cases, and numer- 
ous models, sizes, and styles of movements sold on vacillat- 
ing marketing pohcies. Never did it attain a genuinely 
sound footing, however, for it vacated its field of funda- 
mental and distinctive usefulness, viz., the production of 
a reliable, low-priced, simple watch, to meet the advancing 
requirements of its day; it had gone back to the view-point 
of the watch as an ostentatious or ornamental bit of 

•ei94B^ 



"2"A^ Watch That Wound Forever''' 

vanity. Hence the old Waterbury business was compelled 
to close its doors, and in the fall of 1914, the first year of 
the Great War, was bought out at a receiver's sale by a 
firm who had replaced it in the field of supplying watches 
for the masses. This firm rededicated the organization to 
its original mission, modernized its mechanical equipment, 
and revived the Waterbury name after a lapse of twenty 
years, until to-day, through the employment of judicious 
sales-methods, the factory is more successful than ever it 
was in its earlier days. 



-&I9SS 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

"The Watch That^JlfCade the T>ollar 
Famous^'' 

THE next development is so typically American 
that it is difficult to picture it as occurring in any 
other country. 
Heretofore, the history of timepieces had been that of an 
easily traceable evolution, for each of its steps had grown 
naturally out of those before it, and the various improve- 
ments had been made by mechanics trained in the craft. 
Yet now, strange to relate, two young men from a Mich- 
igan farm, with no mechanical training, entered the field 
almost in a casual manner, and in less than a generation 
not only became the world's largest manufacturers of 
watches but effected the most radical development in the 
whole story of telling time — involving, as it did, the intro-* 
duction of interchangeable parts, quantity-production, 
and a low price. 

These results might seem at first, to be due to a matterj 
of accidental good fortune. On the contrary, they were an" 
example of evolution quite as logical as any that had 
preceded and were perhaps even more significant. The 
whole development came as the direct product of obser- 
ve 1963- 



"^he Watch That Made the Dollar Famous" 

vatlon, analysis, initiative, perseverance, and hard work — 
the element of good luck being conspicuously absent. 

All history gives evidence of the occasional need of a new 
impulse derived from outside, and bringing with it a fresh 
view-point. There seems to be a tendency in human enter- 
prise for any development after a time to lose its original 
rate of speed and to spend itself in complexities. The peo- 
ple who have brought it about appear to lose their power 
to see things simply and in a big way; and, on the contrary, 
they grow technical and occupy themselves with minor de- 
tails. Whereupon the progress of development becomes 
slower and slower, and threatens to stop entirely. Then 
over and over again, there is the record of the advent of 
some fresh new force from an unexpected direction which 
restores youth and vigor. 

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, watch- 
making seemed ready for such an impulse. As we have al- 
ready seen, it had long been developing from within along 
technical and professional lines. Excellent and costly time- 
pieces that were marvels of accurate mechanism had been 
produced. That part of its work had been well done, but 
the industry was in danger of losing its human touch. 
Watches were being viewed more as articles of manufac- 
ture and merchandise than as of wide-spread human ser- 
vice in meeting a general public need. 

In a sense, therefore, the industry was unconsciously 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

waiting the coming of a non-technical man who knew the 
public at first hand and understood people's requirements, 
who was not fettered by tradition, who had a vision of 
universal marketing and distribution, and who was not 
held back by a fore-knowledge of difficulties. It was ex- 
actly this vision which Robert H. Ingersoll had of the in- 
dustry and he developed it with the assistance first of his 
brother, Charles H. and later of his nephew, William H. 
He did not "discover" the dollar watch, as many think, 
but grew toward it during the course of a dozen years. 

It came about, as already stated, in a manner that was 
typically American. Young Ingersoll left his father's farm 
near Lansing, Michigan, in 1879, at the age of nineteen, 
and went to New York to seek his fortune. He was en- 
tirely without technical training save in farming, but he 
had a considerable first-hand knowledge of the needs and 
desires of what Lincoln called the '^common people." 
Finding employment for a time, he saved One Hundred 
and Sixty Dollars, and, with this large capital, started in 
business for himself in the manufacture and sale of rubber 
stamps. Before long he was able to send back to Michigan 
for his younger brother, Charles H. Being of an inventive 
turn of mind, he devised a toy typewriter which attained 
a considerable sale as a dollar article. This was followed by 
a patented pencil, a dollar sewing-machine, a patent key- 
ring and other novelties of his own creation. 



"^he Watch That Made the Dollar Famous" 

In the course of time, the products of other manufac- 
turers were added to the list. Thus the brothers soon found 
themselves with an embryo manufacturing and wholesale 
jobbing business. The business grew, and the next develop- 
ment was that of a mail-order department. In this branch 
they were pioneers and preceded by some years the famous 
mail-order houses of Chicago and elsewhere. Their catalog 
ran into editions of millions of copies. Next, the Ingersolls 
became pioneers in another sales-plan. They developed the 
chain-stores idea, starting with a retail specialty store in 
New York, and following it with six others. Incidentally, 
they found themselves among the largest wholesale and 
retail dealers in the country in bicycles and bicycle 
supplies. 

All of this was a strange but none the less effective 
preparation for watch-making and the marketing of 
watches by millions. Robert Ingersoll, who had remained 
in the selling and promoting end of the business, knew 
little about watches, but since he was constantly 
engaged in traveling about the country and in talking with 
merchants and others, he was gaining a great fund of 
knowledge as to human needs and market possibilities. 

Presently he became convinced that his business, in spite 
of its prosperity, lacked something vital. He grew dissatis- 
fied with handling a succession of unimportant novelties. 
It began to dawn upon his mind that these things were 

-§i99B- 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

hardly worth while as a subject for a business, since they 
satisfied only passing fancies on the part of the public. He 
must find something which was really worth while, some- 
thing which filled a real human need on a large scale and 
yet in a new way. If this something could be found, and 
the incredibly large buying power of the great American 
public could be focused upon it, there was hardly any limit 
to the business which would result. 

When this belief had crystallized in the form of a definite 
conclusion, he began at once to search for the "big idea." 
The "big idea" had long been waiting for him to reach this 
state of mind. It had been looking him in the face for many 
days had he but been ready to perceive it. 

On the wall of his room in a Brooklyn boarding-house 
there hung a very small "Bee" clock. It was unobtrusive 
and apparently unimportant. He had glanced at it hun- 
dreds of times with no thought beyond that of learning the 
time. Suddenly, it ceased to be a clock and became an 
open door into the future. Its ticking became articulate 
with a new meaning. 

"Everyone wishes to tell time," it said. "There is not 
one of the millions who crowd the cities, travel the high- 
ways, or spread over the country districts, who does not 
wish repeatedly during his waking-hours to know what 
time it is. Sometimes he is in sight of a clock, but more 
often he is not. Here and there is a man with a watch in his 

-§200 3- 




A Glimpse of a Giant Industry 

T'his picture shows one corner of the huge plants which produce 
twenty thousand Ingersoll watches a day. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

haraiy v orth while as a subject for a business, since they 
\ only passing fancies on the part of the public. He 
, : t rind something which was really worth while, some- 
ihing which filled a real human need on a large scale and 
yet in a new way. If this something could be found, and 
the incredibly large buying power of the great American 
public could be focused upon it, there was hardly any limit 
to the business which would result. 

When this belief had crystallized in the form of a definite 
conclusion, he began at once to search for the **big idea." 
The "big idea" had long been waiting for him to reach this 
state of mind. It had been looking him in the face for many 
days had he but been ready to perceive it. 

On the wall of his room in a Brooklyn boarding-house 
there hung a very small *'Bee" clock. It was unobtrusive 
and apparently unimportant. He had glanced at it hun- 
dreds of times with no thought beyond that of learning the 
time. Suddenly, it ceased to be a clock and became an 
open door into the future. Its ticking became articulate 
with ;i new meaning. 

''Everyone wishes to tell time," it said, "There is nui 
one of the millions who crowd the cities, travel the high- 
ways, or spread over the country districts, who does not 
wish repeatedly during his waking-hours to know what 
time it is. Sometimes he is in sight of a clock, but more 
often he is not. Here and there is a man with a watch in his 

YiiTsuaMl T>iAiO- AO^(S- aaiMuO A 

•V^s*^ x> i^A-iia^ \\oi*^^^iv\ ^wjiiijoAi ^ix^"^wi 



"The Watch That Made the Dollar Famous'' 

pocket. That man has a chance to be efficient; but good 
watches cost money, and most people cannot afford them. 
Here am I, a tiny little ticking clock; I am a good time- 
keeper and I am cheap. Make me a little smaller, sell me 
for a dollar, and you can put the time into everyone's 
pocket." 

At this point, the non-technical man, who knew nothing 
about watches, but who understood human needs, realized 
that something had happened; he pondered deeply and 
began to investigate. He took the little clock to a machin- 
ist in Ann Street, New York, and together they studied the 
possibility of reducing it in thickness and diameter. Pres- 
ently it was discovered that both the New Haven and the 
Waterbury Clock Companies had already produced ar- 
ticles that embodied these conditions. This somewhat 
checked enthusiasm until it was recalled that neither of 
these products was an especial factor in the time-telling 
field. The manufacturers had merely made mechanisms; 
they had not grasped the Big Idea of universal service. 

The timepiece of the Waterbury Company was the 
smaller, and Robert Ingersoll decided to test his mail- 
order market, buying first, one thousand clock-watches at 
eighty-five cents each, and afterward contracting for ten 
thousand more. These articles were offered in the mail- 
order catalog for 1892 at a dollar each, for the sake of 
price-uniformity with the other dollar specialties upon 

•&20IB* 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

which the firm was concentrating. This was done, however, 
in a small way. It was not desired to sell too many on such 
an unprofitable margin, but merely to test the dollar- 
watch idea, hoping that manufacturing charges might 
ultimately be brought down through quantity production. 

These so-called "watches" must not be confused with 
the Waterbury watch; that, as already described, had been 
the output of another company. The "watches" marketed 
by the Ingersolls and bearing their name were in reality 
thick, noisy, sturdy little pocket-clocks, wound from the 
back. They were crude and clumsy affairs compared with 
present-day styles but were, nevertheless, reliable time- 
keepers. 

The public responded to the idea of dollar watches, al- 
though these proved to sell faster in gilt cases than in 
nickel, and still faster when a five-cent gilt chain was 
added. The next year, came the World's Fair in Chicago 
and the odd little mechanism with an appropriate design 
stamped upon its cover attracted some attention from the 
visitors. 

Thus was born the Ingersoll watch, although it bore 
slight resemblance to the watch of to-day. This is due to 
the fact that an immediate policy of experiment and im- 
provement was inaugurated. During these changes, how- 
ever, several points remained fixed. One of these was that 
the watch must be in no respect a plaything, but a practical 

•§202§» 



"The Watch That Made the Dollar Famous" 

accurate timekeeper, not liable easily to get out of order. 
The second was the definite association with the price of 
one dollar, so that it became possible to refer to it humor- 
ously as *'the watch that made the dollar famous;'* and the 
third was that it should have a sturdy ruggedness of con- 
struction that would defy ordinary hard usage. 

Each of these points had its social value — that of the 
last-named being the fact that the dollar price put the 
possession of a real timepiece within the reach of multi- 
tudes who were engaged in forms of activity wherein a 
delicate timepiece would be apt to get out of order. 

The IngersoUs soon became convinced that they had a 
worthy object for promotion, and they did not entertain 
the slightest doubt as to the existence of a waiting public. 
There passed before their minds a picture of the millions of 
farm-boys who did not know when it was time to come 
into dinner, of the millions of working-men who had noth- 
ing to guide them in reaching the factory on time, of mil- 
lions of clerks and school-children and of still other millions 
comprising the bulk of American homes where more good 
timepieces were needed. 

Their problem, therefore, resolved itself into two main 
divisions — those of manufacture and those of sale. The 
manufacturing end involved a contract with the great plant 
of the Waterbury Clock Company, by which this factory- 
was to produce the goods according to the specifications 

•&203S* 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

and under the name, trade-mark, and patents of the Inger- 
solls. This arrangement continues to this day, but has been 
supplemented, as the line has become more extended, by 
the acquirement of two factories of their own, one in 
Waterbury, Connecticut, and one in Trenton, New Jer- 
sey. To-day the three plants produce an aggregate of 
about twenty thousand watches a day. Before such manu- 
facturing results could be obtained, however, there were 
many structural problems to be solved. It was not so easy 
as it sounds to build a practical and accurate watch within 
the narrow limits of a dollar and still leave a profit for 
both the manufacturer and dealer. 

The solution began with the adoption of the "lantern- 
pinion," but the principal difficulty was that which had 
baffled both Howard and Dennison — the problem of pro- 
ducing the extremely minute separate watch-parts in large 
quantities by machinery, and yet with such exquisite pre- 
cision that all parts of one kind should be absolutely inter- 
changeable. By dint of unwearied patience and- much 
scientific research, this problem was finally solved, and it 
is said that Henry Ford got his idea of quantity-production 
from the manufacture of the Ingersoll watch. Incidentally, 
it was demonstrated that low production-costs carry with 
them high wages. In the field of watchmaking, no element 
was more necessary than the skill of well-paid workers. 

In the meantime, the public was waiting, but it did not 

-&204S' 



"ne Watch That Made the Dollar Famous'* 

know that it was waiting. It was going about its business 
quite unaware that mechanical and manufacturing prob- 
lems were being solved in its behalf. There were no eager 
millions standing about demanding watches in order that 
their lives might be run more closely upon an efficient 
schedule. Therefore, simultaneously with the consideration 
of mechanical and manufacturing problems came those of 
sale, which will be discussed in the next chapter. 



*&2058- 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

"Putting Fifty <:JYCillion Watches 
Into Service 

IF THIS were purely a story of the development of 
timepieces as mechanisms, there would be little to add 
to the preceding chapter, save to detail the refinements 
and improvements by which a cheap, clumsy, but reliable 
watch gradually discarded its defects, while retaining its 
virtues, and the manner in which it developed into a va- 
riety of styles and sizes. Essentially, however, this is a 
story of Man and Time, of human needs as served by time- 
pieces. The most perfect piece of mechanism in a show- 
case is like a stove without a fire; it is a mere possibility of 
service, whose value does not begin until it is set to work. 
We have arrived, then, at a time when a small percent- 
age of the total population carried accurate timepieces and 
was able to profit by the more efficient adjustment of its 
actions thus secured. We have seen how the promising 
experiment of the Waterbury Watch Company failed in 
an attempt to equip the masses with watches, principally 
through defects in its system of distribution, and we have 
noted the appearance of another low-priced watch dedi- 
cated to a similar experiment. 



i 



Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service 

It is obvious, therefore, that if the Ingersoll firm has al- 
ready been able to place fifty million separate watches in 
the service of humanity, something unprecedented must 
have taken place in the all-important field of distribution. 
It is significant that Robert H. Ingersoll first called his 
watch the ^'Universal;" indeed, his chief contribution to 
the development of the watch is the idea of universality, a 
word that makes us think more of people than of manu- 
facturers' methods. Having, then, a watch that was uni- 
versal in its possibilities as well as in name, and being 
keenly aware, through his own tastes and experiences, of 
the needs of the vast mass of the public, his greatest prob- 
lem became that of universal distribution; in short, it was 
a selling-problem. At first, there could be no definitely 
formulated plan; various methods must first be tried out. 
From these experiences there gradually arose an adequate 
system of reaching the millions of people who needed 
watches. 

In this, Mr. Ingersoll had effective cooperation. He was 
the pioneer, the salesman, the promoter, the one who knew 
men in the widest sense and had the faculty of getting re- 
sults. His brother, Charles H., was the internal adminis- 
trator and constant counselor. Later, there was added to 
the firm a nephew, William H., who was both a student 
and an analyst. He scrutinized trade-tendencies, deduced 
theories from what he saw, and gave them wide applica- 

-&207-3- 



'Timd Telling 'Through the Ages 

tion in actual tests. Together the members of the firm 
worked out sales-principles of equal opportunity and 
equal treatment — words that had long constituted a 
slogan in politics but were something of a novelty as 
applied to business. In other words, they based their 
plans upon the consumer rather than upon the factory, 
and upon the idea of goods sold through the trade rather 
than to the trade. It took some time, however, to perfect 
their system of distribution but, when finally developed, 
it was the outgrowth of wide and varied experience. 

The firm made its first sales-efforts on the watch through 
its own mail-order catalog. The results brought some en- 
couragement, but proved that in itself this method could 
never bring the volume of sales necessary for a high- 
geared, uniform quantity of production. 

The next recourse was to the so-called "regular trade- 
channels" — the jobbers and retailers. But these dealers 
displayed little interest. They were not promoters of new 
lines, but distributors of those for which a market already 
existed. The jobber sold what the retailers required; the 
retailers what the public demanded. Robert Ingersoll's 
original loud-ticking watch impressed them more in the 
light of a curiosity than as a trade-possibility. In particular 
it failed to appeal to]the, jewelers, since they felt it to be 
out of keeping with the beauty and value which charac- 
terized their stocks of jewelry and silverware. They rea- 



I 




Type of the Finest 
■American Watch 



Waterbury Radiolite 
Tells Time in the Dark" 




Twentieth Century Watches 

Here is represented the final stage in the development of modern 
timepieces. 'Though of graceful lines, they are designed for 
accuracy and utility^ and are ranged in price to fit every purse. 



IIo2i9§nI laboM nirlT iriBrljIeW 

sjiloibfi^I yiudiaJfiW Jzenm^ arfj 'lo aq^T 

'ilifiQ 3fij ni smiT albT" HdjbW nBDnamA 



ni§13 



99:!lnBY IIo2i3§nI nojIimfiH aHT 

maboM arIT e as auomfil 

HdJbW bsoh^-woJ HdjbW bfioilifiil 



HdjbW J2nW a'nsM aaiwS 



83H0TaW YilUTMaO HT3IT^HwT 



Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service 

soned, also, that sales of the new timepiece would inter- 
fere with those of their higher-priced watches, thus failing 
to grasp the fact, since proved to be true, that its use 
would greatly enlarge the sphere of their sales through 
cultivating a general watch-carr\-ing habit. 

Some effort was made with outside trades, but these 
generally considered watches to be out of their line. Never- 
theless, in the course of time, persistent effort began to 
bring results. Occasionally jobbers made purchases, and 
here and there a jeweler or hardware dealer offered the 
watches for sale. When the firm felt justified in spending 
some money for advertising, the public began to learn at 
first hand of the Ingersoll watch, and the sales gradually 
increased. Many people, however, expressed doubt as to 
the quality of a timepiece that could be sold for a dollar, 
and the Ingersolls replied with a guarantee that has since 
become famous 

Then, in the natural course of business, competition de- 
veloped from the marketing of inferior goods, and the firm 
found it necessar}- to place its name on the dial for pur- 
poses of identification. In spite of all difficulties, there 
grew up in course of tune a ven,' considerable public de- 
mand. \A hereupon certain dealers undertook privately to 
raise the price in order to increase their profits. This situa- 
tion was met by emphasizing the price more prominently 
on the boxes and in the advertising, a policy which soon 



'Time Telling Through the Ages 

put an end to price-raising but led, in some instances, to 
the even greater difficulty of price-cutting. The better 
known became the price, the greater became the tempta- 
tion to dealers of a certain class to advertise its reduction 
in order to bolster up ^'bargains'* upon other goods. This 
naturally demoralized the sales of neighboring dealers and 
caused them to lose interest in the line. Thus, instead of 
increasing the sales, the reduced price proved a serious 
selling obstacle 

The same difficulty has been encountered by other 
manufacturers of widely advertised goods, and some of 
them have sought through the courts to compel adherence 
to their prices, the argument being, as in the case of the In- 
gersoll watch, that price-cutting does not serve the inter- 
ests of the public but tends to interfere with sales since it 
obstructs the channels of distribution. At this writing, the 
question in its legal phase has not yet reached a final 
decision in the courts, but the Ingersolls have solved it in 
a practical way, since their trade-policies have brought 
about the voluntary cooperation of the retailers. 

Such cooperation, however, was not to be attained at 
once. It came about through much study and after much 
experience. It involved the assembling of a large amount of 
data upon commercial economics and a deep inquiry into 
the fundamental principles of retail distribution. It proved 
necessary to weigh and compare recent and important 



Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service 

factors in the retail situation. For example, because of the 
fact that so many manufacturers were giving indiscrim- 
inate discounts for quantity purchases, it had become 
profitable to establish huge department stores, chain- 
stores, and mail-order houses whose scale of operation 
made it possible to handle goods in large amounts. 

For a time, the Ingersolls, in common with other manu- 
facturers, gave discounts for purchases in quantity; later, 
as the business grew and its distribution problems were 
more scientifically studied, they saw more clearly the way 
in which the principles of equal opportunity and equal 
treatment could be applied. 

It was in this spirit that the firm began to ask itself 
whether the large distributors were really more efficient 
than the small retailers; whether they actually earned the 
extra amount which they were paid for selling each watch, 
and whether it would be a healthful thing for the country 
if all retail business were transacted through such organ- 
izations — in short, whether restrictions to such a system 
were really consistent with the theory of commercial 
democracy. 

Approached from this standpoint, the answer was found 
to be in the negative. A careful research among stores in 
all sections of the country showed unmistakably that the 
l| cost of selling in a small store was actually less than in the 
department store, the chain-store, or the mail-order house. 



^ime Telling Through the Ages 

Viewing the sale of each watch as an individual transac- 
tion, it was seen that a small store in some far-off country 
village gave quite as valuable service as did a large store in 
a metropolis, and therefore should be paid as much. Con- 
sequently, the Ingersolls introduced a selling-plan which,] 
under the conditions, was as revolutionary in the field of 
retail distribution as the discovery of Galileo had beenj 
in that of clock mechanism. Yet it was merely that of 
flat-price schedule; in other words, it was a provision thai 
the dealer buying one dozen watches, or even one single 
watch, should pay exactly the same price as the dealer whc 
bought ten thousand. Quantity discounts were definiteb 
abandoned. 

Naturally, this plan met with cordial response from the 
countless small retailers scattered throughout the lengtl 
and breadth of the country, and the close relationship thus 
established led to other logical developments in the wa] 
of cooperation, such as that of display devices suited to the 
needs of these dealers, a simplified accounting system t( 
increase their efficiency, and various measures of a similai 
nature. 

In the meantime, a constantly increasing advertising 
appeal resulted in a rapidly growing demand from the 
public, and this, in turn, made possible the assuring a uni- 
form quantity of output, which was in itself the basis 
necessary for maintaining uniform quality. Thus practical 



•e2i2S- 



Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service 

experience and scientific trade-study were formulated into 
what has come to be recognized as a definite commercial 
philosophy, namely, that of uniform quality, uniform 
quantity, uniform demand, uniform price to the dealers 
and uniform price to the consumer — a statement of prin- 
ciples in which, as in the works of a watch, each part must 
be geared to every other to insure eff^ective operation. 

During the time that these business principles were be- 
ing formulated, the line of watches was also in process of 
development with the goal of universality in view. Thus, it 
was presently realized that while the dollar watch was 
essentially a man's timepiece, watches were also needed by 
women and by children. Accordingly, smaller models were 
developed to meet these needs. At a later date, the Inger- 
soll business principles were extended into the field of 
jeweled watches, when the factories of the Trenton Watch 
Company and the New England Watch Company were 
acquired. At the date of the present writing, there are 
more than a dozen models, each of which is adapted to a 
different need and use, but the manufacture of no model is 
undertaken unless there is a market for at least a thousand 
watches a day. 

And the latest development as this is written is the time- 
in-the-dark watch. 

Do you recall a soldier in the "foreword" waiting in the 
darkness for the perilous moment to go "over the top" with 



'Time 'Telling Through the Ages 

his eyes fixed upon the luminous hands and figures of the 
watch strapped to his wrist? This watch may now be 
named; it was the "RadioUte." How it came into existence 
in time to go into the Great War is a story in itself. 

This story is the latest step in that steady progress of 
democratization by which accurate timetelling, once a 
privilege of the few, became the possession of the many. 

A good many people wish to tell time in the darkness as 
well as in the light, and if these people could afford to, they 
bought expensive repeaters. Such watches, however, cost 
hundreds of dollars, so that while telling time in the light 
had come within the reach of everyone, telling time in the 
darkness was still possible for very few. Therefore, the 
watch could not yet be held to be of equal service to all 
humanity in every one of the twenty-four hours. This 
equal service at any moment was finally made possible in 
a somewhat extraordinary manner. 

In the year 1896, Monsieur and Madame Curie startled 
the world with the discovery of radium. They found that 
certain substances emitted rays that would pass through 
solid matter as light passes through glass or as the wind 
blows through a screen. They were finally able to secure 
tiny quantities of a whitish powder, salt of radium, which 
gave forth an energy that acted upon everything brought 
near to it and this energy they calculated, would be pro- 
tected uninterruptedly for three thousand years. Up to the 



Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service 

present time, radium and radioactivity are subjects of 
constant study and research, but radium exists in such 
small quantities and is so enormously costly that compara- 
tively few have had a chance to experiment with it. 

It seems a little strange to think of using the most pre- 
cious substance in the world — many times more costly 
than diamonds — in order to bring time-telling-in-the-dark 
within the reach of every person, but this is exactly what 
has been done. 

People had long been experimenting with paint made 
from phosphorous in order to give off a glow in the dark- 
ness which would be sufficient for time reading, but phos- 
phorus has its limitations; it must first be exposed to 
light before it is taken into the darkness, and if a watch- 
dial treated with phosphorus is buried in the pocket it 
cannot absorb enough light in the daytime to be luminous 
at night. With radium, however, the problem was solved. 
It was found that this amazing substance would affect 
certain other substances, causing them to shine for years 
in the darkness by means of their own light. 

Thus it became possible to develop a luminous coating 
which the Ingersolls applied to the hands and figures of 
their "Radiolite" watch and, presto ! the problem of telling 
time in complete darkness was mastered to the advantage 
of every buyer. The inexpensive watch revealing the hour 
with equal visibility in inky darkness as in bright daylight 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

had become a reality. In passing, it is interesting to note 
that the experiments with the watch-face led to many- 
other developments, such as luminous compasses, gun- 
sights, airplane guides, and the like. 

Then came the World War, and the wrist-watch which 
had been often ridiculed as effeminate (although it is hard 
to explain why, since it was first adopted as an obvious 
convenience in the Army and on the hunting-field — two of 
the most masculine spheres of activity it would be possible 
to imagine) was seen at once to be the most easy means of 
knowing the time in actual warfare. Millions of watches,, 
consequently, were strapped to wrists of soldiers and sail- 
ors, and the obvious advantages of the luminous dial 
placed it in enormous demand. Thus it came about that 
the scene described in the opening pages was typical of 
countless instances upon various fronts. 

Although a matter of surprisingly few years, considered 
chronologically, there is a long distance, measured by the 
scale of progress, between the moment when a young man, 
glancing casually at the clock on his bedroom wall read 
wonderful possibilities in its face, and the time when the 
firm he founded was able to take note of such achieve- 
ments as these : 

Factory facilities producing an average of twenty 
thousand accurate watches a day; distribution facilities 
including the cooperation of a voluntary "chain-store sys- 



p f yf i P^; f Bgy tlt«s»'J^aB«iiyF^^g'a^ 



r-n»5a!»Tn -:■■- — ',-^ "^ J ^*7^ -J 




Ielling Time by Darkness 

Many a soldier waited in the darkness j or the perilous moment 

to go ''over the top,'' with his eyes fixed upon the luminous hands 

and figures of his Ingersoll Radio lite. 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

had become a reality. In passing, it is interesting to note 
that the experiments with the watch-face led to many- 
other developments, such as luminous compasses, gun- 
sights, airplane guides, and the like. 

Then came the World War, and the wrist-watch which 
had been often ridiculed as effeminate (although it is hard 
to explain why, since it was first adopted as an obvious 
convenience in the Army and on the hunting-field — two of 
the most masculine spheres of activity it would be possible 
to imagine) was seen at once to be the most easy means of 
knowing the time in actual warfare. Millions of watches^ 
consequently, were strapped to wrists of soldiers and sail- 
ors, and the obvious advantages of the luminous dial 
placed it in enormous demand. Thus it came about that 
the scene described in the opening pages was typical of 
countless instances upon various fronts. 

Although a matter of surprisingly few years, considered 
chronologically, there is a long distance, measured by the 
scale of progress, between the moment when a young man, 
glancing casually at the clock on his bedroom wall read 
wonderful possibilities in its face, and the time when the 
firm he founded was able to take note of such achieve- 
ments as these : 

Factory facilities producing an average of twenty 
thousand accurate watches a day; distribution facilities 
including the cooperation of a voluntary "chain-store sys- 

883M:aiIAQ Ya^|/![lJs.OMIJJ3T 



Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service 

tern" of more than one hundred thousand independent 
retailers, all operating upon a common plan and under 
common prices; a product that has come into the most 
wide-spread use not only throughout the United States but 
in the farthest regions of the inhabited earth — ^which has, 
in fact, in itself served to turn back the tide by which 
watches formerly flowed from Europe into America, so that 
it now proceeds from our shores toward those of Europe 
and other lands; a name which has become as well known 
as any in commercial and industrial life, and better than 
all, the appreciable raising of the efficiency of the human 
race through universally promoting the watch-carrying 
habit and putting fifty million timepieces into service. It 
is altogether an Aladdin tale of modern business. 



-&2173* 




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

The £nd of the yourney 

ID you ever, at the end of a journey — perhaps 
across water, or up to the top of some high hill — 
look backward to the place from whence you 
came, and wonder that it seemed so far away? 

Now as we have completed our journey together through 
the history of man's struggle to gain knowledge and con- 
trol over time, we are impressed with the great contrast 
between Time as it was to mankind in the beginning, and 
Time as it is to us to-day. 

The caveman, with whom we began this story, lived 
close to nature, taking his sense of time from her as he took 
all else. Morning was when the light came, and he waked 
and was hungry; noon was when the sun was highest, and 
night was the time of lengthened shadows and the state of 
darkness. We see these same things, but, for us, they have 
not the same meanings. We count the time by hours and 
minutes, and we reckon these by machines which we have 
made, called clocks and watches. These mean so much 
more to us that, when we set all the clocks forward an- 
other hour to save daylight, it seemed to us as if we had 
changed the actual time. It was practically as if we had 



2^A(? End of the Journey 

performed the miracle of Joshua, who in Bible story, made 
the sun stand still, or the miracle of Isaiah, who made 
the chadow go back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. After a 
few days, we did not feel as if we had set the clocks; we 
felt as if we had made the sun wait for us, and the very 
day come earlier. 

And so it is with the seasons. The caveman called it 
spring when the swallows came, and autumn when the 
leaves changed their color. But we judge of these things by 
the calendar; we say that the spring "is very late this 
year," or that the **leaves are beginning to turn early." 
We have a proverb that one swallow does not make a sum- 
mer; no, nor do all the swallows, so far as we moderns are 
concerned. It is summer for us upon a certain day, no 
matter what the swallows do, but for the caveman, sum- 
mer was when the swallows came, whenever that might be. 

It is like that to-day among primitive peoples. The Turk 
who listens for the crowing of a cock or the braying of an 
ass to tell him of the hour, or calls the cat to him to look at 
its eyes and judge the time by the shape of their pupils — 
he is more like the caveman in this than like ourselves. So 
is the South Sea Islander, who knows the season of the 
year from the direction of the trade-winds. So is the pa- 
tient savage, who cares little as to how long he must 
wait for the creature he is hunting to come near the spot 
where he lies hidden. 

-§2199* 



T'ime Telling 'Through the Ages 

How different it all is with ourselves ! We rise at a certain 
hour, and so many minutes later we have our breakfast. 
At such a time, we must be at work. Our work itself is all 
made of appointments one after another, or of tasks to be 
finished within a certain time. Our meals, our hours of rest, ' 
our meetings with our friends, our recreations, and our 
pleasures — all these, until, again, at a certain time we go 
to bed, in order that so many hours of sleep may make us 
fit for the next day, are measured by the clock and counted 
out by the tick of a toothed wheel or the regular swing of \ 
2L pendulum. 

We say that the savage has no sense of the value of time. 
We have, and it is by that fact largely that we are better off J 
than he. Value means measure; you cannot value a thing] 
unless you can measure it exactly. And so because we cani 
measure time, we can see what time is worth to us, and 
make it worth more. The savage keeps an appointment — ^^j 
when he happens to make one. But we, because we know! 
how long it takes to reach a certain place, or how long aj 
time we need or wish to spend with a certain man, canl 
make and keep many appointments. We can travel like the] 
wind from place to place, because in measuring time we can 
measure speed, and therefore we can make speed safe and 
possible. We can talk to a friend a thousand miles away, or! 
signal by electric waves around the world. We do these] 
things because our sense of time has told us that the olclj 



•6 2203- 



'^he End of the Journey 

way of sending letters and messages was too slow. And so 
we have set to work to invent ways that should be quicker. 
We should never have had the telephone, the cable, or 
the wireless, unless we had cared about time and been able 
to measure it. 

The caveman lived, perhaps, as many years as we — but 
how much did he do in those years .? We, who have learned 
to measure years and to allot each day or hour to sundry 
tasks, have made ourselves able to do far more in a life- 
time — many times more. We do not live a greater number 
of years, but it is as if we lived many lives in one. We 
speak of time as we speak of money, of saving and wast- 
ing and spending. Well, Time is Money, as Ben Franklin 
said, but it is something more — ^Time is Life. And we think 
of our lives as so much time at our command, and there- 
fore we xan make the most of them. The gulf between us 
and the primitive men is a contrast of living less or more, 
and OMT more life comes in great measure from our having 
learned to measure time. 

Everyone has read the story of Aladdin and his wonder- 
ful lamp. You will remember that the poor boy came into 
possession of a lamp which quickly made him the richest 
and most powerful person in the world, since, through 
owning it, he could control the service of a mighty genie, 
able to perform the most incredible tasks. 

The modern man — every man — is something like Alad- 



Time Telling Through the Ages 

din, only he is much more powerful. He has the genie of 
steam to work for him when he pulls the lever, and the 
genie of electricity ready to serve him if he but press a 
button. He has many other mighty servants that modern 
science has given to him, but greatest of all, most useful of 
all, is the Slave of the Watch which lies in his pocket — 
mighty Time himself. 

This ability to record time and therefore, to control it, is 
perhaps the greatest of all man's triumphs. Only see what 
it has done for him ! Have you ever thought of yourself as a 
person of no special importance ? — ^why, you have far more 
actual power than was possessed by Alexander the Great, 
Julius Caesar, or Charlemagne ! 

You can command forces and can accomplish results 
that would have made any of these proud autocrats stare 
in wonder. If you do not stand out above your age, as they 
did above their ages, it is simply because millions of other 
people besides yourself also possess these powers. It is 
undoubtedly true that we are to-day a race of giants, and 
it is also true that each of our powers is directly or indi- 
rectly due to the common fact that we all can keep track 
of time. For consider that what mankind can accomplish 
to-day depends upon the ability of people to work to- 
gether, and that working together would cease if people 
had no accurate means for telling time. 

For example, you make a railway journey upon a matter 



I'he End of the Journey 

of Importance to you. The first thing that you do Is to 
examine a time-table on which Is shown the minute when 
the train Is due to leave. You calculate to yourself how 
many minutes you must allow for reaching the station, 
and then look at your watch to see how long you will still 
have for other work. If you had not watch or clock, or you 
were dependent merely upon the position of the sun, you 
might go to the station several hours ahead of time In 
order to be "on the safe side." During the hours thus saved 
you can accomplish a great deal of work. It is as though 
your day had been made several hours longer. 

Unseen In your pocket, your watch ticks steadily. You 
trust it absolutely, and you know that it will be faithful 
to its trust. Occasionally you glance at It and, when the 
hand reached the limit of safety, you start for the train. 
You reach the station three or four minutes before train- 
time and find the tracks clear; no train Is in sight. 

This however, does not cause you the least uneasiness. 
You merely take your watch from your pocket and look 
expectantly up the line. Perhaps a minute before the train 
is due, you hear a distant whistle, then the approaching 
roar of wheels upon the rails, and, just as the watch-hand 
reaches the proper moment, the train itself whirls round 
the curve and draws up to the station, exactly on time. 

As you proceed upon your way, you notice how other 
people at other stations are also meeting their schedules 



^ime 'J'elling I'hrough the Ages 

and conserving their time. You see the conductor glance at 
his watch as he gives the engineer the starting-signal. You 
realize that the whole transportation system is merely an 
enormous piece of clockwork and that it, in turn, is a part 
of the vaster clockwork of modern civilization. 

Turn where you will, there is nothing that you can do 
and nothing that you can use which is not dependent upon 
the ticking of clockwork. The locomotive which pulls your 
train, the cars in which you ride, the rails over which you 
pass, all of these are products of factories, but the factories 
are run upon the time-basis; there is no other way in which 
they could be run. 

The workmen in these factories leave their records upon 
time-clocks when they come and when they go. If the 
workmen were not there at the same time, the work could 
not be done, since most of modern work depends upon the 
ability of people to work together at the same task. Even 
if one man were late, it might lose time for many. The 
clothes that you wear come from other factories where 
other workmen have time-clocks and watches. The build- 
ings that you see from the windows were put up on the 
time-basis and were paid for according to the movement 
of the hands upon watch dials. 

You buy a newspaper, making sure that you are getting 
the latest edition, and it is at once as though you looked 
into a great mirror reflecting the activities of all the world. 



wsB?^sss!e®MSSI3mmsWi■;rf«^®;;^■!•^■'<■'^^^^*«%;!W*^!l^^ 







Time Pieces Vital to Industry 

Without the ability to record time, and, therefore, to control it, 
the complex weh of human activity would becom.e hopelessly 

tangled. 



^1 irne 'Telling Through the Ages 

and conserving their time. You see the conductor glance a 
his watch as he gives the engineer the starting-signal. You 
realize that the whole transportation system is merely an 
enormous piece of clockwork and that it, in turn, is a part 
of the vaster clockwork of modern civilization. 

Turn where you will, there is nothing that you can do 
and nothing that you can use which is not dependent upon 
the ticking of clockwork. The locomotive which pulls your 
train, the cars in which you ride, the rails over which you 
pass, all of these are products of factories, but the factories 
are run upon the time-basis; there is no other way in which 
they could be run. 

The workmen in these factories leave their records upon 
time-clocks when they come and when they go. If the 
workmen were not there at the same time, the work could 
not be done, since most of modern work depends upon the 
ability of people to work together at the same task. Ever, 
if one man were late, it might lose time for many. The 
clothes that you wear come from other factories where 
other workmen have time-clocks and watches. The build- 
ings that you see from the windows were put up on the 
time-basis and were paid for according to the movem 
of the hands upon watch dials. 

You buy a newspaper, making sure that you are get^ 
the latest edition, and it is at once as though you loci 
into a great mirror reflecting the activities of all the world, 

YilTSUaMl OT JA'f^4e^3Hl4 aMiT 

^\ii^\"^<^oA '5>mo:)^<i ^\m-o^ ^U^sh'iia i^awM-A \o ^i-^*^ •y;,^\(^mo':> ^Ai 



'The End of the Journey 

but all of the dispatches bear a date-line, and many of 
them are also marked with the hour. 

Before the days of newspapers, people felt themselves to 
be a part of the lives of their own immediate neighborhood 
and knew only vaguely of what went on at a distance, but 
now each day one feels himself to be a part of the great 
human family and can sometimes make his plans with 
reference to things that may be occurring thousands of 
miles away. But the newspaper itself is a product of clock- 
work; there is perhaps no institution whose workers keep 
closer track of the passage of the minutes. 

In view of all these things, does it seem too much to 
claim that if all the timepieces in existence were destroyed 
and men were given no other means for telling time, civil- 
ization would swiftly drop to pieces and man would find 
himself traveling backward to the conditions of the cave- 
man? 

But there is one thing in our modern timekeeping which 
we still have in common with the first men who ever kept 
the time. We still go by the sun and the stars and refer all 
our measure to that apparent revolution of the heavens 
which we know to be really the motion of our world itself. 
As did those wise men of old Babylon, so do we even now, 
spying upon the mighty master clock of the universe to 
correct all our little timepieces thereby. A man sits alone 
in an observatory, with his eye to a telescope. That tele- 



'Time 'Telling 'Through the Ages 

scope is of a certain kind, called a ''transit." It is fixed upon 
the meridian, the north-and-south line in the sky over that 
place. And a thread of spider-web across the lens marks for 
him the exact position of the line, in the very middle of his 
field of view. So as he watches, he can see one star after 
another come into view at one side of the glass and pass 
across it to the other side and disappear. He is watching 
the world go round. 

A certain star appears, one which his calculations have 
told him will cross the meridian at a certain particular 
instant. Beside him is an electrical device connected with 
a clock, which marks off seconds at intervals round a re- 
volving drum. The star draws nearer to the center of his 
field. As it crosses the hair-line, the observer touches a key, 
and the precise instant of its crossing is recorded upon the 
drum, to within a fraction of a second. Since the clock has 
marked its record of the seconds there, the clock can be 
corrected by the star. 

Now, if that man had been a priest in Babylon, he 
would have kept his knowledge as a means of power to 
himself and to his equals. If he had been a dweller in a 
somewhat later age, he would have kept it to himself no 
less, either because people would not believe, or because 
the claim of too deep knowledge of the secrets of nature 
might put his life in danger. But he is a modern, and so 
his knowledge is for all who seek it. 

•&226B* 



1'he End of the Journey 

On some tall building in a distant city, a time-ball hangs 
suspended at the top of its pole, and people pause to look 
up at it. They hold their watches in their hands. Upon the 
tick of noon, an impulse will come from the observatory, 
and the ball will drop. Then those who have been looking 
will set the hands of their watches and pass on. At the same 
instant, the news of noon will be flashed by telegraph 
across the land, and by wireless to ships at sea. The whole 
Western Union system will suspend business for a little, 
while the lines are connected and the observatory at 
Washington ticks off the seconds. Everywhere there are 
electric clocks, automatically controlled by some master 
clock, which, in its turn is governed by the observatory 
time. So we all, as a matter of course and without thinking, 
set our watches by the star. Civilization every day catches 
step with the heavenly bodies. 

Back of all that we see of life, therefore, stands the great 
fact of measuring time, and those who are engaged in giv- 
ing to man the instruments for this purpose have a special 
responsibility. Perhaps the ancient peoples were not so 
far wrong when they permitted time-telling to be a priv- 
ilege of the priests. It is far more than a matter of money- 
making; it is a fixing for humanity of the standards of 
daily life; it is a duty which lies at the foundation of mod- 
ern efficiency; it is even a sacred trust. 

Therefore, the man who makes or sells unreliable timc- 

-0227^ 



'J'ime Telling Through the Ages 

pieces is false to his trust. Through his action people are 
thrown out of adjustment with the world about them, and 
they, in turn may seriously interfere with the plans of 
many others. It is hard to believe that there are some 
people who still look upon a watch as "jewelry," or that 
there are some dealers who are more interested in the 
watch-case than in the movement it contains. 

The watchman of olden times was a public officer. He 
was chosen for his reliability, and people felt confidence 
when he called the hours. The watch-dealer of to-day is in 
a somewhat similar position; he has a serious duty to his 
community. He is not chosen by the public, and yet, even 
more than the watchman, he is a public servant since the 
watches that he puts into people's pockets are their prin- 
cipal means of adjustment to the busy affairs of life. In a 
sense, he supplies them with the basis of their efficiency. 
His duty is that of supplying the largest practicable de- 
gree of accuracy to the largest possible number of people. 
The Slave of the Watch will not obey the owner of an inac- 
curate timepiece. 

Time itself is elemental; it had no beginning, it can have 
no ending. It is like a great ocean which flows round all of ^ 
the earth, and neither begins nor ends in any one place. 
But time for any man is exactly according to his use of it. 
It is as though a man were to go to the shore of the bound- 
less ocean, with a tin cup in his hand. If he could get no 

'e228€* 



^he End of the Journey 

more than a cupful of water, it would not be because of 
any limit in the amount available, but merely in his means 
for carrying it away. Should he have a pail, a barrel, or any 
larger receptacle, then the water would belong to him in a 
correspondingly larger amount. 

Thus, time each day presents itself equally to everyone 
upon the earth, but some receive it in cups, some in pails, 
and some in barrels. Some make of their day a thing of 
no results, while others fill it with real achievement. 
Those who achieve are they who have learned to value 
time, and to make it serve them as the mighty genie that 
it is. 

These are the wonders which Kipling had in mind when 
he wrote : 

If you can fill each unf or giving minute 

With sixty seconds livorth of distance run. 
Yours is the earth and everything that's on it, 

<LAnd, laihat is more, you^ll be a man, my son ! 



'0229S- 



APPENDIX A 

How It JVorks 

HAVING traced out the history of the clock and watch mechan- 
ism all the way from De Vick's first clock and the clumsy old 
Nuremberg Egg down to the perfect time-keeping device 
which we have today, it may be interesting to look a little more closely 
at the result of so many years and so many inventions — to see what 
its parts are, and how they are put together, and to observe how the 
v/onderful little machine does its work. 

Modem clocks and watches are nearly enough alike in their struc- 
ture and way of working, so that if we understand the one, we shall 
easily understand the other also. The differences between them are few 
and slight and easy to explain. So let us take for our example a typical 
modem watch movement, which is easily the more beautiful and 
interesting mechanism of the two. 

First of all, as we saw in the days of De Vick and Henlein, a watch, 
or a clock, is a machine for keeping time. So it must have three essen- 
tial parts: first, the power to make it go; second, the regulator to make 
it keep time; and third, the hands and face to show plainly the time 
it keeps. Each of these three parts is itself made up of several others. 

The power or energy which runs the watch is put in to it by the 
winding which coils up the mainspring. The outer end of this spring 
is attached to the rim of the main wheel (1) and after the spring is 
wound this wheel would whirl round and let the spring run down in- 
stantly if there was nothing to stop it. The teeth on this wheel, how- 
ever, are geared into the second or center pinion (as shown in illus- 
tration at "A") which makes it run the entire movement while run- 
ning down slowly instead of flying round and uncoiling at once. 

As we will see later, the spring-power is transmitted through the 
train of wheels and the lever (7) to the balance wheel (8) which lets the 
escape wheel (5) turn a little each time it swings, while it simultane- 
ously receives, by means of the lever from the escape wheel, the "im- 
pulse" or power which keeps it running. Thus the swinging of the 
balance lets the mainspring down gradually while drawing its power 



How It Works 

from it. The spring is made as thin as it can be and still have power 
enough to make the watch go. For a modem watch, this is about one 
flea-power. One horse power, which is only a small fraction of the 
power of the average automobile, would be enough to drive all the 
millions of watches in the world. 

The center pinion into which the mainspring is geared is attached 
to its staff to which is also fastened the large center-wheel (2) so that 
the spring cannot turn this pinion without also turning the center 
wheel. But the center wheel is, itself, geared into the third pinion, 
which is attached to the third wheel (3), and this again is geared into 
the fourth pinion attached to the fourth wheel (4). The fourth wheel 
gears into the escape pinion which revolves with the escape wheel (5), 
so that none of these wheels or pinions can turn except when the 
escape wheel does. But there is a constant pressure from the spring 
on all of these wheels, which together constitute what is called the 
train. 

The escape wheel, therefore, wants to turn continually and if it was 
not restrained it would revolve rapidly, letting the movement run 
down. But it is retarded and can only turn from one tooth to the next, 
each time the balance (8) turns. This action is secured by connecting 
the balance and the escape-wheel by means of the lever (7), one end 
of which forms an anchor shaped like a rocking-beam, called the 
pallet (6). In the pallet are two jewelled projections called the pallet- 
jewels which intercept the escape-wheel by being thrust between its 
teeth, letting it turn a distance of only one tooth at each swing of the 
balance as the pallet rocks back and forth. 

The other end of the lever is fork-shaped, having two prongs. On 
the staff with the balance instead of a pinion as all the other wheels 
have, is a plain, toothless disc called the roller, from the lower side 
of which projects a pin or rod made of garnet. This is called the 
jewel-pin or the roller-jewel. The roller being fastened to the bal- 
ance-staff, of course, turns just as the balance turns and with it the 
jewel-pin. And the lever is just long enough and is so placed that every 
time the balance turns, the jewel-pin fits into the slot between the 
prongs of the lever-fork carrying it first one way, and then, as the 
balance comes back, the other way. Thus the lever is kept oscillating 
back and forth, rocking the pallet and withdrawing one pallet-jewel, 
releasing the escape-wheel just long enough to let it run to its next 



Appendix A 




<iA (ty)(todern Watch <JtCovement 

1 First or tyi:CainW heel towluchmainspringis attached. 6 "Pallet, laith Toilet 'Jev>eli. 

2 Second or Qenter Wheel. y Jl^er. 

3 Third Wheel. 8 "balance. 

4 Fourth Wheel. 9 Hair Spring. 

5 escape Wheel. i o %oller 



tooth before the other pallet-jewel is thrust in to stop it. It is a 
beautiful thing, to watch, like the beating of a tiny heart, or the 
breathing of a small quick creature. The hairspring (9) almost seems 
to be alive. And indeed, it is in a way, the very pulse of the machine. 

There is only one more important point to understand. You know 
how the power gets as far as the escape wheel from the mainspring, 
and how the motion of the balance lets the escape-wheel revolve a 
tooth at a time, but you have still to learn how the power which keeps 
the balance rotating reaches it from the escape-wheel through the 
lever. Here is the most interesting feature of a watch movement. 

After the balance has been started, its momentum at each turn 
starts the lever when the jewel-pin strikes it, but unless the balance 
was constantly supplied with new power it would soon stop, and the 
watch would not run. It will be noticed, however, from the illustra- 
tion, that the teeth of the escape-wheel are peculiar in shape and very 



-e232s- 



How It Works 

diiFerent from those of the other wheels. The ends of the pallet-jewels 
are also cut at a peculiar angle. 

Now, each time just before the jewel-pin starts to shift the lever 
from one side to the other, the latter is in such a position that one of 
the pallet-jewels is thrust in so that its side is against that of one of 
the teeth of the escape-wheel, keeping it from turning. But the in- 
stant the lever commences to move it begins to draw this pallet-jewel 
outward from the tooth until the corner of the jewel passes the comer 
of the tooth. Then the escape-wheel is released and the power that 
is behind it makes it turn quickly, and on account of the shape of the 
tooth, it gives the pallet-jewel a sharp push outward, swinging the 
lever, causing it at the other end to impart a quick thrust to the jewel- 
pin, thereby accelerating the speed of the balance and renewing its 
momentum. 

Thus the balance receivec the power to keep it in motion, swinging 
it as far as the hairspring allows. The hairspring then reverses it and 
swings it until the jewel-pin again starts the lever in the other direc- 
tion, releasing the escape-wheel from which it receives another "im- 
pulse" and so on as long as the mainspring is kept wound. A watch 
in perfect time ticks five times to the second. That means 18,000 
swings of the balance every hour, or 432,000 in a day. And in that 
time, the rim of the balance travels about ten miles. 

A clock is essentially only a larger and stronger watch, just as a 
watch is a clock made small enough and light enough to be carried 
about conveniently. But the working of the two is practically the 
same. They are but different members of the same family, varying 
types of one time-keeping machine which is among the most ingenious 
and valuable things that man has made. 

One interesting thing to know about a watch is that if it is keeping 
good time, it will serve for a fairly accurate compass. So if you are 
ever lost in the woods, your watch may help you out again. Lay it flat 
face upward, and point the hour hand toward the sun. Then South 
will be in the direction half way between the hour hand and the figure 
12, counting forward as the hands turn in the morning hours, and 
backward in the afternoon. This is because the hour hand moves 
around the dial just twice as fast as the sun moves around the sky, 
m.aking a full circle in twelve hours while the sun makes its half 
circle from horizon to horizon. 



Appendix A 

Now, the sun is always to the southward of you as you are any- 
where north of the equator. At noon, the sun is practically due South. 
At that hour, both hands of your watch are together on the figure 12 
and the hour hand pointing at the sun points in that direction. At 
6 a.m. the sun is nearly East, so if the hour hand, now on the figure 6 
is pointed eastward toward the sun, then South would be in a line 
just over the figure 9. At 6 p.m., the sun being in the west and the 
hour hand pointed at it, South would be half-way back toward the 
figure 12, or just over the figure 3. For other morning or afternoon 
hours, the same reasoning holds true. 



-&234S* 



APPENDIX B 

"Bibliography 



Adjusting, Practical Course in — Theo. Gribi. Jewelers' Circular 
Publishing Company, New York City, 1901, 

American Clockmaking — Its Early History — Henry Terry. J. 
Giles & Son, Waterbury, Connecticut, 1870. 

American Watchmaker and Jeweler, The — (An encyclopedia.) 
H. G. Abbott. Geo. K. Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1891. 

American Watchmaker and Jeweler — J. Parish Stelle. Jesse 
Haney & Co., New York City, 1868. Revised Edition, 1873. 

Ancient and Modern Timekeepers — Reprint from Harper's Maga- 
zine, July, 1869. Albert D. Richardson. 

Annuaire Suisse (de I'horlogerie et de la bijouterie) — Supplement 
gratuit — de 1' Annuaire du commerce Suisse. Geneva, Switzer- 
land, 191 2, 

Artificial Clockmaker, The — (Fourth edition with large emenda- 
tions.) Wm. Derham. James, John and Paul Knapton, Lon- 
don, England, 1734. 

AusFUHRLicHE Geschichte der Theoretisch-Praktischen Uhr- 
macherkunst Seit der Altesten Art den Tag Einzutheilen 
Bis an das Ende des Achzehnten Jahrhunderts— Johann 
Heinrich Moritz Poppe, Roch und Compagnie. Leipzig, Ger- 
many, 1 80 1. 

Avis Sur le Privilege des Horloges et des Montres de la 
Nouvelle Invention — ^J. de Hautefeuille, Paris, France. 

Clock and Watchmakers' Manual — M. L, Booth. John Wiley, 
New York City, i860. 

Clock and Watchmakers' Manual, New and Complete — Mary L. 
Booth. J. Wiley, New York City, i860. 

Clock and Watchmaking, Rudimentary Treatise on — E. B. 
Denison (Lord Grimthorpe). John Weale, London, England, 
1850. 

Clock and Watchmaking, Treatise on — ^Thomas Reid. Blackie 
and Son, London, England, 1849. 



Appendix B 

Clock and Watch Repairing, Essentials of — John Drexler, Mil- 
waukee, Wisconsin, 1914. 

Clock and Watch Work — From the Eighth Edition of the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica — Sir Edmund Beckett. Adam and Charles 
Black, 1855. 

Clockjobber's Handybook, The — Paul N. Hasluck. Crosby Lock- 
wood and Son, London, England, 1899. 

Clock, Watches and Bells — Sir Edmund Beckett. (Sixth edition 
Revised and Enlarged.) Lockwood & Company, London, 
England, 1874. 

Clockwork, Essays on the Improvement of — Alexander Cum- 
ming, London, England, 1766. 

Collection Archeologique du Prince Pierre Soltykoff. Hor- 
LOGERiE. Description et Iconographie des Instruments 
Horaires du XVIe Siecle, Precedee d 'un Abrege Historique 
DE L'HoRLOGERiE AU MoYEN Age — Pierre Dubois. V. Didron, 
Paris, France, 1858. 

Curiosities of Clocks and Watches — E. J. Wood. R. Bentley, 
London, England, 1866. 

Detached Lever Escapement, The — Moritz Grossman. (Revised, 
Corrected, Enlarged.) Jewelers' Publishing Co., Chicago, 
Illinois, 1884. 

Detached Lever Escapement — A Discourse on The — (Pamphlet.) 
C. T. Higginbotham. South Bend Watch Co., 19 12. 

Die Pendeluhr Horologium Oscillatorium — Christian Huyghens, 
1673. W. Engelman, Leipzig, Germany, 1913. 

English Trades, Book of — Sir Richard PhilHps. (Twelfth edi- 
tion.) London, England, 1824. 

EssAi SuR L'Horlogerie, Relativement a L'Usage Civil, 1 
TAstronomie eta la Navigation — 2 Vols., Paris, France, 1763. 

Evolution of Automatic Machinery — E. A. March. Geo. IC 
Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1896. 

Evolution of the Time-Piece — Lyon and Scott. Ottumwa, Ohio, 
1895. 

Friction, Lubrication and Lubricants — ^W. T. Lewis. Geo. K. 
Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1896. 

Geschichte der Uhrmacherkunst — Emanuel Schreiber. B. Fr. 
Voigt, Weimar, Germany, 1850. 

•§2360* 



Bibliography 

Great.Industries of United States — Horace Greeley. J. B. Burn, 
Hyde & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1871. 

HisToiRE Corporative de L'Horlogerie de L'Orfevrerie etdes 
Industries Annexes — Anthony Babel. A. Kundig, Geneva, 
Switzerland, 1916. 

HiSTOiRE DE LA Mesure du Temps PAR LES HoRLOGES — Ferdinand 
Berthoud, Paris, France, 1802. 

HiSTOiRE DE L'Horlogerie — Pierre Dubois. Published under man- 
agement of "Moyen Ageet la Renaissance," Paris, France, 1849. 

History of Inventions, Discoveries and Origins — Johann Beck- 
man. Tr. from German by Wm. Johnston. Revised and En- 
larged by Wm. Francis and J. W. Griffith, London, England, 
H. G. Bohn, 1846. 

History of Watches and Other Timekeepers, A — ^J. F. Kendal. 
Crosby Lockwood and S'^n, London, England, 1892. 

Industrial History of the United States — Albert Sidney Bolles. 
Henry Bill Publishing Co., Norwich, Connecticut, 1879. 

Jewelled Bearings for Watches — C. T. Higginbotham (Pam- 
phlet.) G. K. Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1911. 

Journal Suisse D'Horlogerie — Publie sous les auspices de la 
classe d'industrie et de commerce. (Societe des arts de 
Geneve.) 1876. 

L'Art de Conduire et de Regler les Pendules — Ferdinand 
Berthoud. Paris, France. 1805. 1811. 

Les Montres Sans Clef — Adrien Philippe. Geneva, Switzerland. 
1863. 

Lessons in Horology — Jules Grossman and Herman Grossman. 
Keystone, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1905. 

Les Transformations Industrielles Dans L'Horlogerie 
Suisse— Henri Borle. G. Krebs. 1910. 

Lever Escapement, The — T. J. Wilkinson. Technical Publish- 
ing Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1916. 

L'Horlogerie Astronomique et Civile; Ses Usages — Ses Pro- 
gres Son Enseignement a Paris — A. H. Rodanet. Vve. C. 
Dunod, Paris, France, 1887. 

L'Industrie HorlogI;re aux Etats Unis — George Blondel. Soc. 
de geographic commerciale de Paris. Bull, mensuel. Paris, 
France,1917. 



Appendix B 

Manipulation of Steel in Watchwork — John J. Bowman. 

Jewelers Circular Publishing Co., New York City, 1903. 
Modern Clock, The — Ward L. Goodrich. Hazlitt & Walker, 

1905. 
Modern Horology — Claudius Lanier. Trans, by J. Tripplin. 

E. Rigg. (Second Edition.) Crosby Lockwood & Co., Lon- 
don, England, 1887. 
Modern Horology, Treatise on — Claudius Lanier. Translation. 
Modern Methods in Horology — Grant Hood. Kansas City, 

Jeweler and Optician, Kansas City, Missouri, 1904. 
Nouveau Regulateur des Horloges des Montres et des Pen- 

DULEs; Ouvrage Mis a La Portee de Tout Le Monde et 

Orne de Figures — Ferdinand Berthoud and L. Janvier, Paris, 

France, 1838. 
Old Clock Book — Mrs. N. Hudson Moore. Frederick A. Stokes 

& Co., New York City, 191 1. 
Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers — F. J. Britten. B. 

T. Batsford, London, England, 1899. Revised and Enlarged, 

1914. 
Old English Clocks — F. J. Britten. Lawrence & Jellicoe. London, 

England, 1907. 
Old Scottish Clockmakers — ^John Smith. W. J. Hay, Edinburgh, 

Scotland, 1903. 
Short Talks to Watchmakers — C. T. Higginbotham. (South Bend 

Watch Co.) 1912. (Pamphlet.) 
Simple and Mechanically Perfect Watch, A — Moritz Grossman, 

G. K. Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1891. 
SuN-DiALS, Book of — Mrs. Alfred Gatty. Bell and Daldy, London, 

England, 1872. 
SuN-DiALs AND RosES — ^Alice Motse Earle. Macmillan Co., Lon- 
don, New York City, 1902. 
SuR Les Anciens Horloges et Sur Jacques de Dondis Sur- 

NOMME HoROLOGius — Falconet Camille. In Liber C. Col. D. 

V. 16, 1838. 
Time and Clocks — ^A Description of Ancient and Modern 

Methods of Measuring Time — (Sir) H. H. Cunnynghame, 

M.A., C.B., M.I.E.E. Archibald Constable & Co., London, 

England, 1906. 

•&238B- 



Bibliography 

Time and Its Measurement — James Arthur. (Reprinted from 
Popular Mechanics Magazine.) Chicago, Illinois, 1909. 

Time and Timekeepers — L. and A. Mathey. (Pamphlet.) 1877. 

Time and Timekeepers — Adam Thomson. T. and W. Boone, 
London, England, 1842. 

Time and Time Tellers — ^J. W. Benson. Robert Hardwicke, Lon- 
don, England, 1875. 

Timekeeper Invented by the Late Thomas Mudge, The — By- 
Thomas Mudge — his son. Printed for the author, London, 
England, 1799. 

Tower Clock and How to Make It — E. B. Person. Hazlitt and 
Walker, Chicago, Illinois, 1903. 

Universal Clock Adjuster — Eleazar Thomas Perdue. Richmond, 
Virginia, 1877. 

Watch, The — Henry F. Piaget. Third edition. A. N. Whitehome, 
New York City, 1877. 

Watch Adjusters' Manual — Charles Edgar Fritts. Charles E. 
Fritts, London, England, New York City, Toronto, Canada, 1894. 
(Third edition revised.) 

Watch and the Clock, The — Rev. Alfred Taylor. Phillips and 
Hunt, New York City, 1883. 

Watch and Clock E^scapements — Keystone. Philadelphia, Penn- 
sylvania, 1904. 

Watch and Clockmaker's Handbook, Dictionary and Guide. F. J. 
Britten. E. & F. N. Spon, London. Spon & Chamberlain, New 
York City. (Tenth edition), 1902. 

Watch and Clockmaking — David Glasgow. Cassel & Co., Ltd., 
London, England; Paris, France; Melbourne, Australia, 1897. 

Watch Balance and Its Jeweling, The (A lecture) — C. T. Higgin- 
botham. (South Bend Watch Co.) 1907. 

Watch Factories of America, The — Henry G. Abbott. Geo K. 
Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1888. 

Watchmaker and Machinists' Handbook — Wm. B. Learned. G. 
K. Hazlitt & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1897. 

Watchmakers' and Jewelers' Handbook — C. Hopkins. John P. 
Morton & Co., Louisville, Kentucky, 1866. 

. ■*&239e- 



Appendix B 

Watchmakers' and Jewelers' Practical Handbook — Henr}' G. 
Abbott. Fifth edition revised and enlarged. Geo. K. Hazlitt & 
Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1892. 

Watchmakers' Handbook — Cladius Lanier. 

Watchmakers' Lathe — ^W. L. Goodrich. Hazlitt & Walker, Chicago, 
Illinois, 1903. 

Watchmakers' Tables — ^The American Jeweler, Chicago, Illinois, 
1914. 

Watchmaking in America — Reprint from Appleton's Journal. Rob- 
bins, Appleton & Co., 1870. 

Watch Repairing — F. J. Garrard. Crosby Lockwood & Son, Lon- 
don, England, 1903. 

Watch Tests — A Booklet of Tables — F. M. Bookwalter, Spring- 
field, Ohio, 19 II. 

Watchwork, Treatise on — H. L. Melthropp, M.A., F.S.A. E. & 
F. M. Spon, London, England, 1873. 

Worshipful Company of Clockmakers of London, The — Cata- 
logue OF THE Museum of — Second edition. Blades, East and 
Blades, London, England, 1902. 

Workshop Notes for Jewelers and Watchmakers — Compiled by 
Charles Brassier. Jewelers' Circular Publishing Co., New York 
City, 1892. 



-5240 s* 



I 



APPENDIX C 
^American W^atch <3(Vanufacturers 

(CHRONOLOGY) 

JUDGED by the number of failures which have marked the devel- 
opment of the American watch industry, watch manufacturing 
might well be characterized as a perilous business. While it has 
proved profitable for a few, it also has swallowed many fortunes. 

There were no watch companies in America until 1850, although a 
few attempts were made to manufacture watches in the United States 
prior to that time — by Luther Goddard, who established the first 
American watch factory at Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in 1809 and 
made several hundred watches from 1809 to 1815, when he finally 
abandoned the business; by Henry and James F. Pitkin at East Hart- 
ford, Connecticut, from 1838 to about 1845 and by Jacob D. Custer 
at Norristown, Pennsylvania, from 1840 to 1845. 

Except for a few companies whose organization and speedy disso- 
lution had small, if any, effect upon the industry as a whole, the fol- 
lowing briefly outlines the history of American watch manufacturing 
companies from the real beginning in 1850 to the present day: 

1850 

The American Horologe Company of Roxbury, Massachusetts, 
organized; name changed same year to The Warren Manufacturing 
Company; in 1853 name was again changed to The Boston Watch 
Company, the principal stockholders of which organized The Waltham 
Improvement Company to buy land and buildings for The Boston 
Watch Company at Waltham, Massachusetts; moved into the new 
factory at Waltham in 1854; failed in 1857 and company's business 
was bought in by Royal E. Robbins, watch importer of New York 
City and Tracy & Baker, watch case manufacturers of Philadelphia; 
in 1858 The Waltham Improvement Company increased its capital 
and purchased the business and property of The Boston Watch Com- 
pany and re-incorporated under the name of The American Watch 

•&24I-3* 



Appendix C 

Company; in 1885 the name was changed to The American Waltham 
Watch Company and in 1906 the name was again changed to The 
Waltham Watch Company, its present name; in 1913 the Company 
purchased the business of the Waltham Clock Company. 

1857 

E. Howard & Company of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was organized 
by Edward Howard; in 1861 the name was changed to The Howard 
Clock & Watch Company; in 1863 the company practically failed and 
was reorganized under the name of The E. Howard Watch & Clock 
Company; in 1881 the Company again practically failed and was 
again reorganized under the name of The E. Howard Watch & Clock 
Company, with Edward Howard as President, as he had been in the 
preceding organizations; in 1882 Howard withdrew as President and 
severed his connection with the Company. From that time forward 
the Company gave increasingly greater attention to the manufacture 
of clocks, although it continoied to manufacture the Howard watch 
until about 1903 when it entered into a contract with The Keystone 
Watch Case Company of Philadelphia, under which The E. Howard 
Watch & Clock Company transferred to The Keystone Company all 
rights to the use of the name "E. Howard" in connection with the 
manufacture of watches and also changed its own corporate name to 
The E. Howard Clock Company. Later the company failed and was 
operated by receivers until 1910 when a new company of the same 
name was organized and purchased the property of the old concern. 
The Keystone Company purchased the factory of The United States 
Watch Company at Waltham, Massachusetts, and began the manu- 
facture of watches under the name of The Howard Watch Company. 

1859 

The Nashua Watch Company of Nashua, New Hampshire, was or- 
ganized; it failed in 1862 and was bought in by the American Watch 
Company — now The Waltham Watch Company. 

1863 

The Newark Watch Company of Newark, New Jersey, was or- 
ganized; it sold out to The Cornell Watch Company of Chicago in 
1870. 

-& 242 %- 



ATYierican Watch Manufacturers 

The United States Watch Company of Marion, New Jersey, was 
organized; it failed in 1872 and was operated by creditors for a short 
time under the name of The Marion Watch Company, but again 
failed; machinery of the company was sold to E. F. Bowman of Lan- 
caster, Pennsylvania, who manufactured a few watches and then sold 
the business to The J. P. Stevens Watch Company of Atlanta, 
Georgia. 

1864 

The National Watch Company was organized and erected a factory 
at Elgin, Illinois; in 1874 the name was changed to its present name 
of The Elgin National Watch Company. 

The Tremont Watch Company of Boston was organized, with 
Aaron L. Dennison, one of the founders of the original Waltham 
Watch Company as superintendent; it ceased business in 1868 because 
of lack of capital; machinery of the company was sold to an English 
syndicate which organized in England The Anglo-American Watch 
Company, the name of which was later changed to The English 
Watch Company. 

The New York Watch Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, was 
organized by Don J. Mozart and others; it practically failed in 1866 
and was reorganized under the same name; again failed in 1870 and 
the business was taken over by a new company known as The New 
York Watch Manufacturing Company, This Company survived 
only a few months and the property and business were taken over by 
a new group in January 1877 under the name of The Hampden Watch 
Company, which company, in turn, was later purchased by John C. 
Deuber and associates in control of The Deuber Watch Case Manu- 
facturing Company of Canton, Ohio, which was originally organized 
at Cincinnati about 1888. 

1867 

The Mozart Watch Company of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was organ- 
ized by Don J. Mozart after leaving The New York Watch Company; 
in 1871 the property and business were sold to The Rock Island 
Watch Company of Rock Island, Illinois. 

1869 
The Illinois Springfield Watch Company was organized; in 1875 it 

-e 243 %- 



Appendix C 

was reorganized under the same name; in 1879 It was again reorgan- 
ized and the name was changed to The Springfield Illinois Watch 
Company, which was later changed to The Illinois Watch Company, 
under which name it now operates. 

1870 

The Cornell Watch Company of Chicago was organized and took 
over the business of The Newark Watch Company of Newark, New 
Jersey; in 1874 it sold its business and property to The Cornell Watch 
Company of San Francisco, California. 

1871 

The Rock Island Watch Company of Rock Island, Illinois, was or- 
ganized and purchased the business of The Mozart Watch Company 
of Ann Arbor, Michigan; it failed the same year without producing 
any watches and passed out of existence. 

1872 

The Washington Watch Company of Washington, D. C.vWas or- 
ganized, but failed after two years. 

1873 

The Rockford Watch Company of Rockford, Illinois, was organized; 
in 1896 the company failed and the business was operated by assignee 
until 1901 when it was sold and reorganized under the name of The 
Rockford Watch Company, Ltd.; it discontinued business in 1915, 
since which time the remaining stock has been marketed by The 
Illinois Watch Case Company of Elgin, Illinois. 

1874 

The Adams & Perry Watch Manufacturing Company of Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania, was organized; it failed in 1876 without producing any 
watches; the property was purchased by a syndicate in 1877 which 
organized under the name of The Lancaster Pennsylvania Watch 
Company; in 1878 it was reorganized under the name of The Lancaster 
Pennsylvania Watch Company, Limited; in 1878 it was again re- 
organized under the name of The Lancaster Watch Company. In 
1884 control of the company passed to Abram Bitzner, who, with 



American Watch Manufacturers 

Oppenheimer Bros. & Vieth, selling agents of New York City, began 
to operate the company and assumed the name of "Keystone Watch 
Company" as a trade mark; they failed in 1890 and in 1892 the 
property was purchased by The Hamilton Watch Company. 

The Freeport Watch Manufacturing Company of Freeport, 
Illinois, was organized, but before producing any watches the com- 
pany's factory burned and the business was discontinued in 1875. 

1874 

The Cornell Watch Company of San Francisco, California, was 
organized and took over the business of the Cornell Watch Company 
of Chicago; in 1875 the company was reorganized under the name of 
The California Watch Company and in 1877 the business was sold to 
the Independent Watch Company of Fredonia, New York. 

1875 

Fitchburg Watch Company of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was 
organized, but discontinued, for lack of funds, a few years later with- 
out producing any watches. 

1877 

The Hampden Watch Company, now of Canton, Ohio, was or- 
ganized at Springfield, Massachusetts and took over the business of 
the New York Watch Company; later, the Company's business and 
property were purchased by the interests in control of the Deuber 
Watch Case Manufacturing Company of Canton, Ohio. 

The Independent Watch Company of Fredonia, New York, was 
organized and purchased the business and property of the California 
Watch Company of San Francisco; in 1885 the business was sold 
to the Peoria Watch Company of Peoria, Illinois. 

1879 

The Aubumdale Watch Company, of Aubumdale, Massachusetts, 
was organized and purchased the machinery of the United States 
Watch Company of Marion, New Jersey. In 1883 the company 
made a voluntary assignment. 

1880 

The Waterbury Watch Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, was 



Appendix C 

incorporated; in 1898 the name of the company was changed to the 
New England Watch Company; in 1912 the company failed, and in 
1914 the property was sold to and is now operated as one of the fac- 
tories of Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro. of New York City. 

The E. Ingraham Company of Bristol, Connecticut, founded by 
E. Ingraham in 1835 for the manufacture of clocks, was incorporated; 
in 1912 the company purchased the business of The Bannatyne 
Watch Company of Waterbury, Connecticut. 

The Western Watch Company of Chicago was organized but failed 
the same year without producing any watches, the machinery being 
sold to The Illinois Watch Company. 

18S2 

The Columbus Watch Company was organized at Columbus, Ohio; 
it was the outgrowth of a private enterprise started in 1876 by D. 
Gruen and W. J. Savage, who imported watch movements from 
Switzerland and sold them in American-made cases. In 1903 the busi- 
ness of the company was purchased by The South Bend Watch Com- 
pany of South Bend, Indiana. 

The J. P. Stevens Watch Company of Atlanta, Georgia, was or- 
ganized and failed in 1887. 

1883 

The New Haven Watch Company of New Haven, Connecticut, was 
organized; in 1886 the company moved to Chambersburg, New Jersey, 
then a suburb of Trenton; in the same year the name of the company 
was changed to The Trenton Watch Company; in 1907 the company 
failed and in 1908 the business and property were acquired by Robt. 
H. Ingersoll & Bro. of New York City. The factory at Trenton has 
since been operated as one of the plants of the IngersoUs. 

The Manhattan Watch Company of New York City was organized 
but did not long continue. 

The Cheshire Watch Company of Cheshire, Connecticut, was or- 
ganized and continued in operation for about ten years. 

The Aurora Watch Company of Aurora, Illinois, was incorporated 
but did not begin operations until 1885; failed in 1886; machinery 
sold in 1892 to The Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsyl- 
vania. 

-& 246 B* 



American Watch Manufacturers 

1884 

The Seth Thomas Clock Company of Thomastown, Connecticut, 
founded by Seth Thomas in 1813 and incorporated in 1853, began 
the manufacturing of watches in 1884, but discontinued their manu- 
facture in 1914. Seth E. Thomas, Jr., great-grandson of the founder, 
is now president of the company. 

The United States Watch Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, 
was organized as an outgrowth of The Waltham Watch Tool Com- 
pany. Later it failed and its plant was purchased by The Keystone 
Watch Case Company, which operates the factory under the name of 
The Howard Watch Company, 

1885 

. The New York Standard Watch Company of Jersey City, New 
Jersey, was organized; in 1902 it was purchased by The Keystone 
Watch Case Company, which continues to operate it under the orig- 
inal name. 

The Peoria Watch Company of Peoria, Illinois, was organized and 
took over the business of The Independent Watch Company of Fre- 
donia. New York, but did not long survive. 



The Wichita Watch Company of Wichita, Kansas, was organized, 
but continued in operation only a few years. 



The Western Clock Manufacturing Company was incorporated 
with factory at Peru, Illinois, and general offices at La Salle, Illinois; 
began manufacturing watches in 1895; in 1895 the name of the com- 
pany was changed to Western Clock Company; manufacturers of 
"Big Ben" alarm clock and low-priced nickel watches. 

1890 

D. Gruen Sons & Co., of Cincinnati, originally incorporated under 
laws of West Virginia; in 1898 re-incorporated under laws of Ohio. 
Prior to original incorporation the business was operated as a 
partnership under the name of D. Gruen & Sons. Present company 
also operates under the trade name of Gruen Watch Case Co. The 



Appendix C 

company manufactures its watch movements in Switzerland, assem- 
bling and casing them in the United States. 

1892 

The Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was 
organized; made only movements until 1909, but since then, both 
cases and movements. 

1893 

Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., of New York City, first introduced the 
original Ingersoll watch to the public at the World's Columbian 
Exposition; in 1892 the Ingersolls had contracted with the Waterbury 
Clock Company of Waterbury, Connecticut for the manufacture of 
the low-priced watch, which was first sold for 31-50 and later for 31-00; 
in 1908 the Ingersolls purchased the factory and business of the Tren- 
ton Watch Company of Trenton, New Jersey, and began watch manu- 
facturing on their own account; in 1914 they purchased the plant of 
The New England Watch Company, formerly The Waterbury Watch 
Company of Waterbury, Connecticut. 

1894 

The Webb C. Ball Company of Cleveland, Ohio, founded in 
1879 and incorporated in 1891, began the manufacture of watches. 

1899 

The Keystone Watch Case Company of Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
vania, was organized. It controls The Howard Watch Company of 
Waltham, Massachusetts, The New York Standard Watch Company 
of Jersey City, New Jersey, The Crescent Watch Case Company, 
Inc., of Newark, New Jersey, and The Philadelphia Watch Case 
Company of Riverside, New Jersey. 

1902 

The South Bend Watch Company of South Bend, Indiana, was 
incorporated in New Jersey under the name of The American National 
Watch Company, but immediately thereafter changed to its present 
name; in 1903 it purchased the business of The Columbus Watch Com- 
pany of Columbus, Ohio; in 1913 it was re-incorporated under Indiana 
laws. 

-§2489* 



American Watch Manufacturers 

1904 

The Ansonia Clock Company of Brooklyn, New York, incorpor- 
ated in 1873, began the manufacture of low-priced nickel watches; its 
principal business, however, is that of clock manufacture. 

1911 

The Leonard Watch Company of Boston, Massachusetts, was in- 
corporated for the purpose of selling and distributing watches. 



*&249e* 



APPENDIX D 

J^eil-IQiolvn TVatch CoHections 

(From list compiled by Major Paul M. Chamberlain, of Chicago in 1915.) 

Abbott — George E. H. Abbott, Groton, Massachusetts. 

Addington — S. Addington, Esq., purchaser at Bernal sale. 

AsHMOLEAN — ^Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England. 

Augsburg — Maxmillian Museum, Augsburg, Germany. 

Baker — Edwin P. Baker, referred to by Britten. 

Baxter — James Phinney Baxter, Portland, Maine. 

Blois — Musee de la ville, Blois, France. 

Boston — Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Bourne — T. W. Bourne, referred to by Britten. 

British — British Museum, London, England. 

BuLLEY — Edward H. Bulley, referred to by Britten. 

Burkhardt — M. Albert Burkhardt, Basle, Switzerland. 

Chamberlain — Paul M. Chamberlain, Chicago, Illinois. 

Chesam — Lord Chesam, referred to by Britten. 

Cluny — Musee de Cluny, Paris, France. 

Clarke — A. E. Clarke, London, England. 

CocKEY — Edward C. Cockey, New York City. 

Cointre — La Famille Cointre, of Poitiers, France. 

Copenhagen — Horological Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Cook — E. E. Cook, Walton-on-Thames, England. 

Czar — Imperial collection. Hermitage Gallery, Petrograd, Russia (1915). 

Cumberland — Duke of Cumberland, England. 

Debruge — Debruge collection, catalogue published in 1849, referred to by M. E. 

Deville in Les Horlogers Blesois. 
Dennison — Franklin Dennison collection, Birmingham, England. 
Devotion — The Edward Devotion House, Brookline, Massachusetts. 
DiCKSOisC;^ — R. Eden Dickson, London, England. 
DiTiSHEiM — Henri Ditisheim, Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. 
Dresden — Green Vaulted Chambers, Dresden, Germany. 
DuPLESSis — Family of Duplessis of Blois, referred to in Les Horlogers Blesois. 
Dover — Dover Museum, Dover, England. 
DuNWOODY — Dr. W. J. Dunwoody, mentioned by Britten. 
EsTREiCHER — Dr. Tad. Estreicher, Fribourg, Switzerland. 

EscHENBACH — Baroncss Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Vienna, Austria-Hungary. 
Fawkes — J. H. Fawkes of Farnlet Hall, England. [by widov/ to British Museum. 

Fellows — Collection of Sir Charles Fellows, of Westbourn, Isle of Wight, bequeathed 
Fitzwilliam — Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. 

-§2509* 



Well-Known Watch Collections 

Fleisher — Collection of Moyer Fleisher, exhibited in the Pennsylvania Museum, 

Memorial Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
FouLC — M. Foulc, Paris, France. 
Franck — B. Bernard Franck, Paris, France. 
Freeman — Charles Freeman, referred to by Britten. 
Froidevaux — M. Froidevaux, Blois, France. 
Garnier — M. Paul Gamier, Paris, France. 
Gelis — M. Edouard Gelis, Paris, France. 
Geyer — H. F. Geyer, mentioned by Britten. 
Georgi — M. Georgi, Paris, France. 
Glyn — George Carr Giyn, referred to by Britten. 
GoTHA — Museum of Gotha, Germany. 
Greene — T. Whitcomb Greene, referred to by Britten. 
Guildhall — Guildhall Museum, London, England. 
Hartshorne — Albert Hartshorne, referred to by Britten. 
Hearn — George Hearn collection, presented by widow to Metropolitan Museum of 

Art, New York City. 
Heckscher — Martin Heckscher collection in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. 
Heinz — Collection of Henry J. Heinz, exhibited in the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg. 
HoDGKiNS — Collection of J. E. Hodgkins, London, England. 
Humphreys — Miss M. Humphreys, mentioned in Britten. 
Jenkins — Collection of Jefferson D. Jenkins, Decatur, Illinois. 
King — C. King, Newport, Monmouthshire, England. 
Kensington — South Kensington Museum, London, England. 
KiRNER — B. A. Kirner, Chicago, Illinois. 
Lambert — Messrs. Lambert, referred to by Britten. 
Lazerus — Collection of Moses Lazerus, Philadelphia, bequeathed to Pennsylvania 

Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
Lambiley — Compte de Lambiley, France. 
Laurance — E. A. Laurance, mentioned by Britten. 
Lebenheim — Mentioned in Morgan catalogue. 
Lecointre — Family of Lecointre, Poitiers, France. 
Leicester — Leicester Museum, Leicester, England. 
Leroux — M. E. Leroux, Paris., France. 
Liljigren — L. O. Liljigren, Chicago, Illinois. 
Londesboro — Lord Londesboro, London, England. 
Louvre — Musee de Louvre, Paris, France. 
Marfels — Collection of Carl Marfels, Berlin, Germany. 
Massey — Edwards Massey, London, England. 
Meldrum — Robert Meldrum, referred to by Britten. 
Metropolitan — Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 
MiRABAUD — M. G. Mirabaud, Paris, France. 

Moore — Bloomfield Moore collection in Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia. [City. 
Morgan — J. Pierpont Morgan collection at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
0. Morgan — Octavius Morgan collection in British Museum. 
Moray — Lord Moray, London, England. 



Appendix D 

Moss — Rev. J. J. Moss, purchaser at Bernal sale, London, England, 1855. 

Munich — National Bavarian Museum at Munich, Germany. 

Nelthropp — Collection presented by Rev. H. L. Nelthropp to the Worshipful Company 

of Clockmakers of the City of London and exhibited at Guild Hall Museum. 
Newington — Newington Free Library, Newington, England. 
Olivier — M. Olivier, Paris, France. 
Parr — Edward Parr, London, England. 
Partridge — R. W. Partridge, London, England. 
PoNSONBY — Hon. Gerald Ponsonby, referred to by Britten. 
Proctor — Frederick Towne Proctor, Utica, New York. 
Proctor, T. R. — Thomas Redfield Proctor, Utica, New York. 
PuRNELL — J. B. Purnell, purchaser at Bernal sale in 1855. 
Ranken — William Ranken, London, England. 
Reeves — R. F. Reeves, St. Louis, Missouri. 
Renouard — Family of Renouard, Belois, France. 
Roberts — Evan Roberts, London, England. 
Robertson — J. Drummond Robertson, London, England. 
Roblot — Ch. Roblot, Paris — Passy, France. 
RoTHCHiLD — Baroness Alphonse de Rothchild collection. 
Rosenheim — Max Rosenheim, referred to by Britten. 
Roux — Edward Roux, mentioned by Britten. 
Salting — Collection now in the South Kensington Museum. 
Saussure — M. Th. de Saussurc, mentioned by Britten. 
Sauve — M. Sauve, Belois, France. 

ScHLicHTiNG — Baron von Schlichting, Petrograd, Russia, (1915). 
Shapland — Charles Shapland, London, England. 
Shaw — Morgan Shaw, London, England. 

SiDEBOTTOM — Collection of Mrs. H. Sidebottom, in South Kensington Museum. 
SiVAN — M. Charles Sivan, Paris, France. 

Smythies — Major R. H. Raymond Smythies, London, England. 
SoANE — Soane Museum, London, England. 
Stamford — Stamford Institution, England. 

Stroehlin — Stroehlin collection, referred to in J. P. Morgan catalogue. 
SuDELL — Edward Sudell, mentioned by Britten. 
Sutton — Rev. A. F. Sutton, England. 
Thompson — Mrs. G. F. Thompson, Ottawa, Canada. 
ToRPHicoN — Lord Torphicon, referred to by Britten. 

Turrettini — Turrettini collection referred to by Dr. Williamson in Morgan catalogue. 
Vautier — M. L. Vautier, Belois, France. 
Vendome — Calvaire de Vendome, France. 
Vienna — Imperial Treasury, Vienna, Austria-Hungary. 

Wallace — Lord Wallace collection, bequeathed by his widow to the British Museum. 
Wehrle — Eugene Wehrle, Brussels, Belgium. 
Wheeler, H. L. — Horace L. Wheeler, Boston, Massachusetts. 
Wheeler — Collection of Willard H. Wheeler, Brooklyn, N. Y., exhibited in the 

Brooklyn Museum, New York City. 



APPENDIX E 



Sncyclopedic 'Dictionary 



ABRASION — Wearing away by rubbing 
or friction. 

Adams, J. C. — A promoter instrumental 
in organizing the Elgin, Illinois, Cornell, 
and Peoria Watch Companies, and the 
Adams & Perry Manufacturing Company. 
He invented and patented the "Adams 
System" of time records in use on most of 
the railroads in the West. He last appeared 
in prominent connection with the watch 
and clock business as the organizer of the 
Swiss horological exhibit at the World's 
Columbian Exposition. 

Addenda — Tips of the teeth of a wheel 
beyond the pitch circle. Sometimes of 
circular outline; sometimes ogive — that 
is, of a shape patterned after the pointed 
arch. The addendum is also known as the 
"face" of the tooth. 

Adjustment — The manipulation of the 
balance with its spring and staff to secure 
the most accurate time-keeping possible. 
Three adjustments are usually made, 
viz.: for isochronism, temperature and 
position. Much of the difference in value 
and cost of watches depends on this 
operation. 

Adjustment to Isochronism — 
Strictly speaking this would cover all 
adjustment; but it is technically under- 
stood to mean an adjustment of the bal- 
ance spring so that the time of vibration 
through the long and short arcs of the 
balance is the same. 

Adjustment to Positions — ^The ma- 
nipulation of the balance and its spring so 
that a watch keeps time in different posi- 
tions. Good watches are usually adjusted 
to five positions. They are pendant up; 
III up; IX up; dial up; and dial down. 

Adjustment to Temperature or 
Compensation — The adjustment of the 
balance and spring so that the time-keep- 
ing qualities are affected as little as pos- 
sible by changes in temperature. See 
Compensation. 



Ahaz— King of Judea, 742-727 B. C. 
See Dial of Ahaz. 

Alarm — Sometimes spelled "alarum.' 
A mechanism attached to a clock whereby 
at any desired time a bell is struck rapidly 
by a hammer. 

Aluminum-Bronze — An alloy of alum- 
inum and pure copper, usually in the 
proportion of 10 parts of the former and 
90 of the latter. It is considerably lighter 
than brass and highly resistant to wear. 

Anaximander — Greek astronomer to 
whom the Greeks ascribed the invention 
of the sun-dial in the sixth century B. C. 

Arbor — The axle or axis on which a 
wheel of a watch or clock turns. Also 
applied to a spindle used by watchmakers. 

Arc — Any section of the circumference 
of a circle. 

Archimedes — A famous Greek philos- 
opher and scientist sometimes credited 
with the invention of the clock. About 
200 B. C. he made a machine with wheel 
work and a maintaining power but having 
no regulator it was no better as a time 
teller than a planetarium turned by a 
handle. It may have furnished the sug- 
gestion for later time-keeping machines. 

Arnold, John — Born 1736. An English 
watchmaker of note. He invented the 
hehcal form of the balance spring and a 
form of chronometer escapement much 
like Earnshaw's. Died 1799. Arnold's 
devices have been most useful and perma- 
nent. 

Assembling — The putting together of 
the finished parts of a watch. In a three- 
quarter plate watch this is done on the 
lower plate. In a full plate movement it is 
easier and more satisfactory to assemble 
on the top plate. 

Astrolabe — 1. An instrument of vari- 
ous forms formerly used especially in 
navigation to measure the altitudes of 
planets and stars. 2. A projection of a 
sphere upon any of its great circles. 



*&2S3 9* 



Appendix E 



Astronomical Time — Means solar 
time, as computed from obseiving the 
passage of the sun across the meridian 
from noon of one day to noon of the fol- 
lowing day. It is counted continuously up 
to 24 — not in two 12-hour divisions. 

Astronomy — The science which treats 
of the motions, real and apparent, of the 
heavenly bodies. Upon this science, 
through its determination of the length 
of the year, is founded the science of 
horology — or time-keeping. 

Automata — for Striking — Very com- 
mon on old clocks and very complicated, 
such as: Indian King hunting with ele- 
phants, Adam and Eve, Christ's flagel- 
lation, and many others. See Clocks, 
Interesting Old. 

Automatic Machinery — The second 
great contribution of America to watch- 
making after the establishment of the 
principle of interchangeability of parts, 
and making possible the effective execu- 
tion of that principle. 

Auxiliary — A device attached to a 
compensation balance to reduce what is 
known as the "middle temperature error." 
Some are constructed to act in high 
temperatures only — as Molyneux's; and 
some in low temperatures only — as 
Poole's. 

Balance — The vibrating wheel in a 
watch or chronometer which with the 
aid of the balance spring (hair-spring) 
regulates the rate of travel of the hands. 
The balance is kept in vibration by means 
of the escape wheel. See Compensation 
Balance. 

Balance Arc — In detached escape- 
ments, that part of the vibration of the 
balance in which it is connected with the 
train. The remainder is called the drop. 

Balance-Clock — A form of clock 
built before the pendulum came into use. 
The regulating medium was a balance on 
the top of the clock made with a verge 
escapement. See Foliot. 

Balance Cock — The 
standard which supports the 
top pivot of the balance. 
In old watches often elabo- 
rately pierced and engraved. 
Balance Spring — In 
BALANCE America usually called the 
COCK "hair-spring." A long 




slender spring that govetns the time of 
vibration of the balance. One end of the 
balance spring is fastened to a collet 
fitted friction-tight on the balance staff, 
the other to a stud attached to the balance 
cock or to the watch plate. The most 
ordinary form is the volute, or flat spiral. 
The other form used is an overcoil. See 
Brequet Spring. The principle of the 
isochronism of a balance spring was dis- 
covered by Hooke, and first applied to a 
watch by Tompion. The name hair-spring 
comes from the fact that the first ones are 
said to have been made from hog bristles. 

Balance Spring Buckle or "Guard" 
— A small stud with a projecting tongue 
attached to the index arm and bridging 
the curb pins so as to prevent their en- 
gaging two of the balance spring coils. 
Used chiefly in Swiss watches. 

Balance Staff — The axis of the bal- 
ance. The part of a watch most likely to 
be injured by a fall. 

Balance Wheel — A term often in- 
correctly applied to the balance itself, 
but properly it is the escape wheel of 
the verge escapement. 

Band — Of a Watchcase — The "middle" 
of the case to which the dome, bottom and 
bezel are fastened; the last sometimes 
screwed, sometimes snapped. 

Bank — Banking- pin. 

Banking — In a lever watch the striking 
of the outside of the lever by the impulse 
pin due to excessive vibration of the bal- 
ance. In a cylinder or verge movement the 
striking of the pin in the balance against 
the fixed banking-pin. 

Banking-Pin — A pin for restricting the 
motion of the balance in verge and cylin- 
der watches. 

Banking-Pins — 1. In a lever watch, 
two pins which limit the motion of the 
lever. 2. In a pocket chronometer, two 
upright pins in the balance arm which 
limit the motion of the balance spring. 3. 
In any watch, the curb pins which confine 
the balance spring are sometimes called 
banking-pins. 

Barlow, Edward (Booth) — A clergy- 
man of the Church of England, born in 
1636. He devoted a great deal of time to 
horological pursuits. He invented the rack 
repeating striking works for clocks, ap- 
plied by Tompion in 1676. He invented 



-&254B- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



also a repeating works for watches on the 
same plan. And he invented the cyhnder 
escapement which he patented with 
lompion and Houghton. When he apphed 
for a patent on his repeating watch he was 
successfully contested by Quare, who was 
backed by the Clockmakers' Company. 
He died in 1716. 

Bar Movement — A watch movement 
in which bars take the place of the top 
plate and carry the upper pivots. Some- 
times termed a "skeleton" movement. Not 
generally adopted because its many sep- 
arate bearing parts promote inaccuracies 
wheru large quantities are to be produced. 

Barrel — A circular box which confines 
the mainspring of a watch or clock. 

Barrel Arbor — ^The axis of the barrel 
around which the mainspring is coiled. 

Barrel Hollow— A sink cut either 
into the top plate or the pillar plate of a 
watch to allow the barrel freedom. 

Barrel Hook — A bent pin in the barrel 
to which the mainspring is attached. 

Barrel Ratchet — A wheel on the 
barrel arbor which is prevented by a dog 
from turning backward while the main- 
spring is being wound and which becomes 
the base against whose resistance the 
train is driven. 

Bartlett, P. S. — One of the early 
watchmakers of America. -Connected with 
the Waltham factory at first and later 
with the Elgin Company. It is said that 
he first proposed the formation of the 
company at Elgin. His name became 
familiar as a household word throughout 
the country from being inscribed upon 
a full-plate model which attained wide- 
spread success. 

Beat — The strike or blow of the escape 
wheel upon the pallet or locking device. 

Beat Pins — The pins at the ends of the 
pallets in a gravity escapement which 
give impulse to the pendulum. 

Beckett, Sir Edmund — See Denison, 
Edmund Beckett. 

Berosus — A Chaldean historian who 
lived at the time of Alexander the Great, 
about 200 B. C, and was a priest of Belus 
at Babylon. Said to have been the in- 
ventor of the hollow sun-dial. He was the 
great astronomer of his age, 

Berthoud, Ferdinand, 1727-1807 — 



An eminent French watchmaker and 
writer on horological subjects. Among his 
books are: "Essai sur I'Horlogene," 
"Traite des Horloges Marines," and "His- 
toire de la mesure du Temps." He was a 
Swiss by birth, but lived most of his Hfe 
in Paris. 

Bezel — The ring of a watch or clock 
case which carries the glass or crystal in 
an internal groove. 

Big Ben — ^The great bell which strikes 
the hours on the clock at Westminster. 

BizzLE — A corruption of Bezel. See 



Blow Holes — Places where the brass 
and steel of a compensation balance are 
not perfectly united, when they are put 
together with silver or solder. 

Bob — The metal mass forming the body 
of a pendulum. 

Boethius, Ancius Manlius Sever- 
INUS, A. D. 480-524 — A Roman philos- 
opher and statesman to whom is 
sometimes attributed the invention of the 
clock. He did make a sun-dial and a water 
clock which latter may have contained a 
germ of the idea later developed into our 
modern clock. 

Boss — A cylindrical prominence or 
stud. The minute hand is carried on the 
boss of the center wheel. 

Bottom — Of a Watchcase — The cover 
outside the dome of the case. Commonly 
called the "back." 

BoucHON — The hard brass tubing of 
which pivot holes in watch and clock 
plates are made; known commonly as 
"bushing wire." The short sections cut off 
for a pivot being called the "bushing." 

Bow — ^The ring of a 
watch case to which the 
guard or chain is attached; 
also known as "pendant 
bow." 
Box Chronometer — A 
marine chronometer. 

Boxing-In — Fitting the watch move- 
ment in its case; applied chiefly to the en- 
casing of stem-winding movements. 

Brequet, Abraham Louis — A cele- 
brated Swiss mechanician and watch- 
maker born at Neufchatel in 1747. He 
made several improvements in watches, 
the most notable being the Brequet hair- 




-&255S' 



Appendix E 




spring still in use in the best watches. He 
died in 1823. 

Briquet Spring — A form 
of balance spring which is 
a volute with its outer end 
bent up above the plane 
of the body of the spring 
and carried in a long curve 
towards the center near 
which it is fixed. Like all other springs in 
which the outer coil returns towards the 
center, it offers opportunities of obtaining 
isochronism by varying the character of 
the curves described by the outer coil and 
thus altering its resistance. So-called from 
its inventor, Abraham Louis Brequet (q. 
v.). Its advantage over the flat spring is 
that the overcoil allows expansion and 
contraction in all directions, thereby 
avoiding a good deal of side friction on 
the pivots as well as insuring more nearly 
perfect isochronism in changes of tempera- 
ture. 

Bridge — A standard fastened to the 
(^^te, in which a pivot works. 

Bridge Model — The term given to 
watch movements in which plates or 
bridges carrying the upper pivots of the 
train rest firmly on the lower or dial plate 
and are held rigid by steady pins on lower 
side of the plate; the bridge being secured 
direct to the dial plate by screws termed 
plate or bridge screws. This is the most 
common construction of present-day man- 
ufacture and is utilized in three-quarter 
plate or separate and combination bridges 
covering one or more pivots of train 
wheels. Its alternate is "pillar model." 

Buck, D. A. A. — A watch repairer in 
Worcester, Mass., who designed a model 
for the Waterbury watch. His first model 
was not successful, but in 1877 he com- 
pleted one which, a little later, the Water- 
bury Company, with Buck as master 
watchmaker, started to make. He remain- 
ed with the company until 1884. 

Bush — A perforated piece of metal let 
into a plate to receive the wear of pivots. 
Butting — The engaging of the tips of 
the teeth of two wheels acting in gear. 
The proper point of contact being in the 
line of the shoulders of the teeth, butting 
is remedied by setting the wheels farther 
apart. 

Button — ^The milled knob used for 
winding and setting a keyless watch. 



CALCULAGRAPH — ^Tradc name for a 
device for automatically computing 
and recording elapsed time in connection 
with factory jobs and other work where 
it is necessary to show the amount of 
labor used. 

Calendar — A system of dividing the 
year into months and days. The principal 
calendars known to history are: the JuHan 
calendar; the Gregorian calendar; the 
Hebrew calendar; the Mohammedan 
calendar; and the Republican calendar. 
None of them has been quite accurate in 
dividing up the solar year, and frequent 
arbitrary corrections are necessary to 
secure a practical approximation. See de- 
scriptive article under each title. 

Julian — Established by Julius Caesar, 
46 B.C., to remedy existing defects in. the 
Roman calendar then in use. The Julian 
year was based on the assumption that the 
solar year is 365}i days — which was 11 
minutes and 14 seconds too long. The 
scheme adopted was to make the regular 
calendar year 365 days, and to add one 
day every fourth year. The Julian cal- 
endar is still in use by Russia and Greece, 
where the dates now differ from those of 
most other countries by 13 days. 

Gregorian — Established October IS, 
1582, by Pope Gregory XIII,.in correction 
of the obvious errors of the Julian cal- 
endar. It is the calendar now in use by 
nearly all civilized nations. The mean 
length of the Gregorian year is 365 days, 
5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds — 26 
seconds longer than the actual solar year. 
Correction is made by adding a 29th 
day for February every fourth year, ex- 
cepting when the date of said fourth year 
is divisible by 100. If, however, the date is 
also divisible by 400, the extra day is 
added. 

Republican — The calendar of the 
French Revolution (1793) declared to be- 
gin at midnight on the meridian of the 
Paris Observatory preceding the true 
autumnal equinox, September 22, 1792. 
There were 12 months of 30 days each 
and 5 or 6 "extra days" (as might be 
necessary) at the end of the year to bring 
the new year nearest to the then position 
of the equinox. AboHshed January 1, 1806. 

Hebrew — Composed of 12 lunar months, 
a thirteenth month being added from 
time to time to secure correspondence of 



*§256§' 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 




the months with the passing seasons. The 
months are arbitrarily arranged to have 
alternately 29 days and 30 days. The 
length of the calendar year varies from 

353 days to 385 days. 

Mohammedan — Based on a lunar year of 

354 days divided into 12 lunar months 
which are alternately 29 and 30 days in 
length. During each period of 30 years a 
total of 11 days are added one at a time 
at the end of a year. The lack of co-ordi- 
nation with the solar year results in a 
total separation of the seasonal year and 
the calendar year. In use in Turkey and 
some other Mohammedan countries. 

Calendar 
Clock, or 
Watch — A 
clock or 
watch which 
indicates 
days and 
mon th s as 
well as 
hours. 

Caliper — 
The scheme 
of arrange- 
ment of a 

watch train, or the disposition of the 

parts of a watch. 

Cam — A rotating piece 
either non-circular or eccen- 
tric, used to convert rotary 
into linear reciprocating 
motion, oftener irregular in 
CAM direction, rate, or time. 

Cannon Pinion — The pinion to which 
the minute hand is attached. It is rubular 
in form ('whence its name), the main arbor 
passing through it friction-tight. 

Canton Berne — The Swiss district 
which does the largest export business in 
silver and base metal watches in Switzer- 
land. The cantonal government has done 
everything possible to promote the in- 
dustry, among other things: 1. Estab- 
lished information offices in the principal 
watch-making centers. 2. Established a 
permanent exhibition of articles used in 
the industry. 3. Established schools and 
associations and protective territories. 4. 
Prepared statistics and means for nego- 
tiating commercial relations. 



CALENDAR CLOCK 




Cap — The part of the case that covers 
the movement. 

Capped Jewel — A jewel having a pro- 
tective end-stone. 

Carillon — Chimes frequently used in 
the earlier clocks for striking the hours. 
Still used in some clocks. 

Caron, Peter Augustus — A famous 
Paris watchmaker, afterward called Beau- 
marchais, who made the first keyless 
watch of which we have any account. 

Case — The metal box in which the 
movement of a watch is inclosed. 

Casb-Springs — ^The springs which 
cause the outer bottom of a watch case to 
fly open when the lock spring is released. 

Center of Gyration — That point in 
which the whole mass of a rotating body 
might be concentrated without altering 
its moment of inertia. 

Center of Oscillation — That point 
in a pendulum at which, if the whole mass 
of the pendulum were collected, the time 
of oscillation would be the same. 

Center Seconds or Sweep Seconds — ■ 
A long seconds hand moved from the 
center of a watch dial, as are the minute 
and hour hands. 

Center Staff — ^The arbor attached to 
the center wheel which carries the minute 
hand. 

Center Wheel — The wheel in ordin- 
ary clocks and watches placed in the 
center of the frame on whose arbor the 
minute hand is carried. It is inter- 
mediate between the barrel and the third 
wheel. 

Chamfer — To cut away 
to a bevel the right angle 
formed by two adjacent 
CHAMFER faces as of a jewel or stone. 
It is also occasionally used to signify chan- 
neling or grooving. 

Chasing — A form of ornament for 
metals which is made by punching or 
pressing from behind to present the pat- 
tern in relief instead of by cutting away 
the material. 

Chops — In a pendulum clock the 
blocks, usually of brass, between which 
the top of the pendulum suspension 
spring is clipped to prevent its twisting as 
it swings. 



^257B» 



Appendix E 



Chronograph — In general^ a recording 
clock or watch. Specifically, a watch with 
a center-seconds hand which may be 
stopped, started or returned to zero at 
will by pressing a button. Used for timing 
races, or measuring other short spaces of 
time with great exactness. 

Chronometer — Any very accurate 
time-keeper. Usually understood to mean 
a time-keeper fitted with a spring detent 
escapement. They usually have a fusee 
and a cylindrical balance spring. 

Chronometer, Marine — Probably the 
most exact form of time-keeper, especially 
for use on shipboard. The driving power 
is a mainspring acting by a chain on a 
fusee, and governed by what is known as 
the Chronometer or Detent Escapement, 
with, as a rule, the cylindrical balance 
spring. The movement is mounted on 
gimbals in an air and water-tight brass 
case, maintaining the dial constantly in 
a horizontal position. 

Chronoscope — A clock or watch in 
which the time is shown by figures pre- 
sented at openings in the dial. 

Church, Duane H. — Credited with 
having contributed more to the automatic 
features of watch machinery than any 
other man. He was born in Madison 
County, N. Y., in 1849. At 16 he was 
apprenticed to a watchmaker of St. Paul, 
Minn., and after working at the trade for 
17 years, he became in 1882 the master 
watchmaker for the Waltham Watch 
Company. Besides his invaluable contri- 
butions to automatic machinery, he im- 
proved the general design of watch move- 
ments and invented a form of pendant 
setting which enables stem-winding move- 
ments to be set in cases not especially 
adapted to them. He died in 1905. 

Circular Error — The difference in 
time arising from the swinging of a pendu- 
lum in a circular arc instead of its true 
theoretical path which is a cycloidal arc. 
This caused much trouble in the early 
clocks. Huyghens attempted to correct it 
{see Huyghens' Checks) but found that his 
device caused greater error. With the 
heavier pendulum and shorter arcs of 
vibration this error becomes negligible. 
The suspension of the pendulum by a flat 
flexible spring instead of a cord, attributed 
to Dr. Hooke, served to make the path 
practically cycloidal. 




CLEPSYDRA 



Cleopatra's Needle — An Egyptian 
obelisk at whose base a dial was marked. 
Now in London. Another similar obelisk 
from Egypt is in Central Park, New York 
City. 

Clepsammia — The sand-glass, more 
familiary known as the hour-glass. See 
Hour-glass; Sand-glass. 

Clepsydra — A device 
for the measurement of 
time by the flow of run- 
ning water. Its simplest 
form is a vessel filled 
with water which trick- 
les or drops slowly from a 
small aperture into an- 
other vessel. One or the 
other of the vessels is 
graduated and the height 
of the w a t er in that 
one at any given time 
indicates the hour. Some- 
times a figure floating on 
the water points to the hours. Later, fall- 
ing, or running, water was made to turn 
wheels or to move a drum, as in "Vailly's 
clock." Clepsydras were made and im- 
proved up to the 17th century. The earliest 
known example — one in China — is cred- 
ited with having existed in 4000 B. 
C. The name indicates the stealing 
away of water and is derived from two 
Greek words meaning "water" and "to 
steal." A common form of clepsydra in 
India was a copper bowl with a small hole 
in the bottom floating on water. When the 
bowl filled and sank the attendant emp- 
tied it, struck the hour upon it and floated 
it again on the surface of the water. Like 
the sun-dial, the clepsydra was invented 
so long ago that there is no authentic 
record of its origin. Its evident advan- 
tages are exactly those which the sun-dial 
lacked. It is quite independent of day or 
night or other external conditions; it is 
conveniently made portable; and by reg- 
ulating the size of the aperture through 
which the water flows, it can be made to 
work slow or fast so as, within consider- 
able limits, to measure accurately and 
legibly long or short intervals of time. 
The disadvantages of the clepsydra 
were, first, that the hole in the container 
tended to become worn away so as to let 
the water out too fast; and second, that 
the water ran faster from a full vessel 
than from one nearly empty, because of 



♦S258s< 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



the greater pressure. This latter was in 
classic times corrected by a clepsydra con- 
sisting of two vessels. The second and 
larger of these was placed below, the 
water running into it, out of the first. A 
float within this larger vessel rose reg- 
ularly as it filled, and carried a pointer 
which marked the time. The first vessel 
from which the water ran into the second, 
was provided with an overflow, and kept 
constantly full up to this level; so that the 
flow of water into the larger vessel re- 
mained constant. 

Once well established and understood 
in principle, the clepsydra became widely 
known over the ancient world, and under- 
went a variety of improvements and modi- 
fications in form. These latter chiefly dealt 
with making it more legible. Means were 
devised, for instance, to make it ring a 
bell when the water reached a certain 
height. And thus the alarm principle was 
very early brought into use. Later on, 
after the development of mechanical 
devices like the pulley and the toothed 
wheel or gear, the pointer was by these 
means constructed to move faster or 
slower than the rate at which the water 
rose, or to revolve upon a 
circular dial on which the 
hours were marked. And 
thus we owe to the clepsy- 
dra the origin of the mod- 
ern clockface as well as of 
the alarm. Later still, by a 
more complex ingenuity, 
devices were arranged to 
strike the hours or to move 
mechanical figures, in fact, 
to perform all the func- 
tions of a clockwork which 
was both driven and regulated by hydraulic 
power. The single hour hand, however, 
remained in place of our two or three 
hands moving at diff"erent speeds, as in 
the modern clock or watch. The clock- 
work also remained primitive in con- 
struction compared with our own. Clep- 
sydrae were always expensive, because 
accurate mechanical work was never 
cheapened until modern time. Rather 
they were made marvels of patient in- 
genuity and lavish ornament. Cunning 
oriental craftsmen spent their skill upon 
elaborate mechanism and costly decora- 
tions. The clepsydra thus became first 
what other time-pieces later became — 




a triumph of the jeweler's craft — a gift 
for kings. And the Greeks, who beautified 
everything that they touched, made it 
at once more accurate and more artistic. 

The clepsydra may thus fairly claim to 
have been the first mechanical device for 
measuring time, as contrasted with the 
sun-dial which was really an astronomical 
instrument; and thus the direct ancestor 
of the mechanical clocks of later days. 
Some authorities, indeed, on the strength 
of certain very ancient allusions to its use 
in China and elsewhere, claim for it an 
antiquity prior to the sun-dial itself. 
There seems, however, to be no reason for 
supposing that the discovery of a me- 
chanical law like the regular flow of water 
antedated so obvious a discovery as the 
motion of a shadow upon the ground. 
The explanation is probably that the 
invention of the clepsydra did precede the 
scientific perfecting of the sun-dial by the 
inclinations of the gnomon; which may 
have taken place about the time of the 
correction of the Babylonian calendar in 
747 B. C. Not long after this date we meet 
with frequent references to the placing of 
a clepsydra in the public square of some 
old city, or to its use in astronomical 
calculations. To this, of course, its prop- 
erty of running by night was pecuharly 
adapted. 

Although the chief defects of the clep- 
sydra were minimized by the use of the 
two vessels and by making the aperture 
through which the water ran of gold or 
some other substance which would wear 
away very slowly, yet there remained 
certain minor imperfections. The water 
could not be kept entirely from evaporat- 
ing; it had to be emptied out at intervals 
and the reservoir refilled; its accuracy 
was affected by the expansion of the 
parts under change of temperature, or 
it might even freeze. These faults were 
obviated in the sand-glass or hour-glass 
which for short intervals of time was also 
more convenient. 

The clepsydra remained in use until 
clocks became superior to it in accuracy. 
See Clocks, Interesting Old; Charlemagne; 
Vailly. 

Clerkenwell — A district on the 
north side of the city of London within 
the metropolitan borough of Finsbury. It 
is distinguished as one of the great centers 
of the watchmaking and jewelers' in- 



♦&259if« 



Appendix E 



dustries in England and long established 
there. The Northampton Polytechnic 
Institute, Northampton Square, has a 
department devoted to instruction in all 
branches of the trade. 

Click — ^The click, pawl, or dog, is a 
necessary accessory of a ratchet wheel. It 
is a finger, one end of which fits into the 
teeth of the ratchet, while the other is 
pivoted on its tangent. The ratchet is 
thus prevented from turning backward. 

Clock — Specifically, a time-piece not 
made to be carried about but to stand 
upon a shelf or table, hang upon a wall 
or as built into a tower. Formerly the 
term signified particularly a time-piece 
which struck the hours. The word has 
its origin in the word for bell in Latin, 
gloccio; Teutonic, glocke; 
French, cloche; and Saxon, 
clugga. At one time the term 
was used to denote timekeep- 
ers driven by weights as dis- 
tinguished from those driven 
by springs. 

Clock-Watch — A watch 
which strikes the hours in 
succession, as distinguished 
from repeaters. Popular in 
the eighteenth century. 

Clock, Banjo — A wall 
clock, so called from its 
shape, designed by Simon Willard, of 
Massachusetts and very popular in 
its time. 

Clock, Bird-Cage 
— ^An old form of Eng- 
Hsh clock whose man- 
ufacture has been dis- 
continued — it is the 
oldest form of English 
clock still doing ser- 
vice. Its main feature 
is the endless chain 
drive. These clocks 
run thirty hours. 

Clock, Bracket — 
A form of clock very 
popular in England during the reign of 
Charles II, made to stand on a bracket 
or table and intended to be seen from all 
sides. These clocks had either a handle 
on top or one on each side. They were 
very beautifully finished. 

Clock, Candle — Wax or tallow candle, 
usually twelve inches long and marked 




CLOCK-BANJO 




CLOCK, BIRD-CAGE 



with circular lines one inch apart. The 
candle would burn one inch every twenty 
minutes or three inches an hour. Inven- 
tion credited to King Alfred the Great. 

Clock, Grandfather's or 
Long-Case — A tall clock with an 
anchor escapement popular thru- 
out the later 18th and early 
19th centuries in England and 
America. Its excellent timekeep- 
ing qualities are due to the very 
long and heavy pendulum which 
allows a small arc of vibration. 
Not often made at present. 

Clock, Hood — A style of 
clock originating and very pop- 
ular in Holland during the late 
17th century. Made of various 
woods, carved and ornamented and 
named from the hood or dome on top. 

Clock, Lamp — ^A long glass 
tube upright on a metal stand 
similar in shape to the old Ro- 
man lamps. Figures were 
painted on the tube to indicate 
the hours — "12" in the middle 
section, with "11" above and 
"1" below the "12." The lamp 
was filled with oil up to the 
hour at which it was lighted — 
then as the oil burned away 
the time was indicated. This 
form of clock was used at night 
in Dutch and German rural homes until 
a comparatively recent date. 

Clock, Lantern — Same as 
Bird-Cage Clock. 
■ n n. Clock, Largest in World — 
^^P^- The Colgate clock in Jersey City 
is claimed to be twice as large 
as the next largest clock in the 
world. Its dial can be read for 




four miles and weighs six tons. Its minute 
hand is twenty feet long and the tip of 
it travels more than half a mile per day. 

Clock Mysteries — Glass Dial — A per- 
fectly transparent dial behind which no 
movement was visible. The hands were 
caused to revolve by watch works and 
semi-circular weights in the counterpoise 
of the hands. 

Clock, Oldest in America — ^A clock 
owned by the Philadelphia Public Li- 
brary — over two centuries old. It was 
made in London and is said to have been 
owned by Oliver Cromwell. 



*e26oB* 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



Clock, Sheep's-Head — ^A clock similar 
to the bird-cage or lantern clock in which 
the dial face projects an inch or two be- 
yond the frame. 

Clock, Skeleton — A clock whose 
works are covered with glass as a protec- 
tion from dust, but are without a case, 
the works being exposed to view. There 
are eight skeleton clocks in the Charles 
Mifflin Hammond collection at the Essex 
Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. 

Clock, Turret — A large clock in 
which the dials are distinct from the 
movement. Because of the exposure of the 
hands to the wind and snow, of the clock 
to dust and dirt, and of the oil to freezing 
temperature, turret clocks to keep time 
must be fitted with some device to obtain 
a constant force on the pendulum. The 
first used was the remontoire but since 
the invention of the gravity escapement 
for the Westminster clock by Sir Edmund 
Beckett this has been used instead. 

Clock, "Wag on the Wall" 
— A wall clock typical of the 




'^.•^"'■^ 



D 



North of Holland in which 
weights and pendulum hung 
below the clock case, entirely 
unenclosed. 

Clock and Watch Makers, 
English, Early — For extensive 
lists, dates, places, and notes, 
see: Old Clocks and Watches & 
Their Makers, by Frederick J. 
Britten; Worshipful Company 
of Clockmakers, London, Pub- 
lished by E. J. Francis and Co., London, 
1875; Old Clock Book, by Mrs. N. H. 
Moore. 

French, Early — See: Old Clocks and 
Watches and Their Makers, by F. J. 
Britten. 

Scottish, Early — For extensive list 
with dates, places and notes, see: Old 
Scottish Clock Makers, by John Smith. 

Clock Makers, American, Early — 
For Hsts, dates, places, and notes, see: 
Old Clock Book, by Mrs. N. H. Moore; 
American Clockmaking — Its Early His- 
tory, by Henry Terry. 

Clock Mysteries; Tortoise in Wa- 
ter — Nicholas Grollier during the first 
part of the eighteenth century made 
many mysterious timekeepers. One was 
a metal dish filled with water in which 



floated the figure of a tortoise always 
keeping his nose to the correct time. 

Ball of Venice — This was a sphere — 
Its upper and lower parts gold, and about 
the middle a silver band bearing the 
numerals. As the band revolved a Cupid's 
wing pointed to the hour. Its action was 
simple. The cord which suspended it was 
wound about a cylinder. The weight of 
the ball constituted the driving power. It 
had a verge escapement. The maker is not 
known. 

Double Globe — Constructed of two 
clear glass globes, the smaller one for the 
minutes above the larger hour globe. The 
mechanism for the latter was in the base, 
and for the minute globe, in the cap of the 
hour globe. Made by Henri Cunge. 

Clocks, Interesting 
Old: 'Anne Boleyn's 
— A clock said to have 
been presented to Anne 
Boleyn by Henry VIII 
on their wedding morn- 
ing. It is about four 
inches square and ten 
inches high, of silver 
gilt "richly chased, en- 
graved, and ornament- 
ed." The weights are of 
lead covered with cop- 
per, gilt and engraved. 
On one are Henry's and 
Anne's initials, and true 
lovers' knots. On the 
other simpjy H. A. At the top of each 
weight is "Dieu et mon droit," at the 
bottom "The most happye." On the top 
of the clock is the figure of a lion holding 
the arms of England, the same being en- 
graved on the sides. The clock is now 
silent. There is no record as to its maker. 
Canterbury — This was the third of 
the large clocks in England. It was con- 
structed in 1292 

Charlemagne's — In 807 the King of 
Persia sent Charlemagne a bronze water 
clock inlaid with gold. The dial consisted 
of twelve small doors representing the 
hours. Each door opened at the hour it 
represented and the correct number of 
balls fell out upon a brass bell. At twelve 
o'clock twelve horsemen appeared and 
shut the doors. 

Coblentz — At Coblentz in a tower on 
the Kaufhaus is a brazen head which 




♦&26lS- 



Appendix E 





gnashes its teeth as the hours strike. For 
a Coblentzer to say "How is the man in 
the Kaufhaus" means "How goes it with 
Coblentz and the good people there?" 

^ de Vick's — In 1364 

Henry de Vick set up a 
clock in the tower of 
\'Sj!i(. the palace for Charles 
W.2^.. V- It was regulated by 
^^ a balance. The teeth of 
the crown wheel acted 
upon two small levers 
called pallets which 
projected from and 
formed part of an up- 
right spindle or staff on 
which was fixed the 
balance. The clock was 
regulated by shifting the weights placed 
at each end of the balance. On the bell of 
this clock the signal for the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew's was struck. 

Dondi's at Pavia — Built in 1344, by 
James Dondi, similar to Wallingford's 
clock. 

Exeter — ^A clock built in Exeter Ca- 
thedral sometime in the 14th century. 
One erected there in 1480 has the sun — 
a fleur-de-lis which points out the hours as 
it revolves around a globe representing 
the earth. A black and white ball repre- 
sents the moon's phases by turning on its 
axis. 

Frederick II — ^The Saladin of Egypt 
presented Frederick II of Germany with a 
clock in the year 1232. It resembled in- 
ternally, a celestial globe, in which figures 
of the sun, moon, and other planets moved 
impelled by weights and wheels. There 
were also the twelve signs of the Zodiac 
which moved with the firmament. 

Hans von Jena's — An 
'old clock in Saxony at the 
top of which is a very ugly 
head. As the clock strikes 
a pilgrim offers an apple 
on a stick to the open 
mouth and then with- 
draws it. At the same 
time an angel opposite the 
pilgrim raises her eyes 
from her book. The legend 
goes that Hans von Jena, 
for a crime, was con- 
demned to undergo such torture for three 
centuries. 





Jefferson s — An old weight clock in 
which the weights are carried over a pul- 
ley and made to indicate the day of the 
week by their position. This is in the hall- 
way at Monticello. 

Lists and Descriptions of — See Curiosi- 
ties of Clocks and Watches, E. J. Wood. 
Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, 
F. J. Britten. Old Clock Book, N. H. 
oore. 

Vase Clocks of Marie An- 
toinette — The movement was 
inclosed in a marble pedestal. 
About the beautifully tinted 
porcelain urn was a double band, 
on which were marked the num- 
erals and which revolved every 
twelve hours. A serpent with 
head erect pointed to the hour. 

Mary, Queen 
of Scots — 
Skull Watch or 
Clock. A small 
clock in the 
form of a skull 
said to have 
been given by 
Mary, Queen of 
Scots, to Mary Seaton, one of her maids of 
honor. The skull is of silver gilt and is 
engraved with figures of Death, Time, 
Adam and Eve, and the Crucifixion. The 
lower part of the skull is pierced to emit 
the sound when it strikes, being cut in the 
form of emblems of the Crucifixion. The 
Works occupy the brain's position in the 
skull fitting into a silver bell which fills the 
entire hollow of the skull. The hours are 
struck on this bell by a small hammer on a 
separate train. 

Pope Sixius' — Built by Habrecht of 
Strasburg in 1589. It greatly resembles 
the Strasburg clock which Habrecht also 
built. It was in the possession of the Popes 
for more than two centuries and later be- 
came the property of William I, King of 
the Netherlands. In 1850 it was exhibited 
in England after which it became the 
property of Mr. O. Morgan. It performs 
all the feats of the Strasburg clock. 

Rouen — In the Rue de la Grosse Hor- 
loge in Rouen a clock made by Jehan de 
Fealius in 1389 is built in a tower which 
surmounts an arched gateway. Its dial is 
about six feet square. It shows the hours, 
days of the week, and phases of the moon. 




^262^ 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 




It still keeps excellent time and is the chief 
clock of the city. 

St. Dunstan' s — 
Erected in 1671 above 
the gateway of the old 
St. Dunstan's Church. 
The clock had two 
dials, back to back up- 
held by a quaint 
bracket. In a little 
open belfry above were 
the gaily painted fig- 
ures of Gog and Magog 
which struck the quar- 
ters on bells suspended near them. In 1830 
the clock was sold to the Marquis of 
Hertford who set it up at his home in 
Regent Park. 

St. Paul's — A clock existed prior to 
1298 in the tower of St. Paul's Cathedral 
which struck the hours by means of me- 
chanical figures called Paul's Jacks. Later 
a fine dial was added. 

Strasburg — Rebuilt twice after the 
first one which was begun about 1352. 
This first clock consisted of a calendar 
which showed the principal movable 
feasts It showed also the movements of 
the sun and moon. On the upper part was 
a statue of the Virgin before which at 
noon the figures of the three Magi bowed. 
At the same time a coqk automaton 
opened its beak, flapped its wings and 
crowed. 2. The second Strasburg clock was 
erected about 1570. This was a very elab- 
orate mechanism, showing besides the 
time, a calendar for a century, the move- 
ments of the sun and moon, eclipses of the 
same and other things. The striking was 
done by an elaborate automatic arrange- 
ment. (See Old Clocks and Watches & 
Their Makers— F. J. Britten.) 3. In 1842 
the clock was again thoroughly recon- 
structed. This, too, is a very elaborate 
system of motions showing the move- 
ments of sun, moon, and planets, also 
sidereal time, a calendar, etc. The hours 
and quarters are struck by automatic 
figures. 

Ulm — In the eastern end of the old 
Rathaus at Ulm is installed an astronom- 
ical clock which dates from the beginning 
of the 16th century. It was thoroughly re- 
paired in 1549 by the builder of the Stras- 
burg clock — Isak Habrecht. Shows in 
addition to the hours, the diurnal and an- 



nual revolutions of the earth and the 
movements and phases of the moon. The 
clock is an artistic achievement as well as 
a mechanical wonder. 

Vally's — A scientific water clock. It 
consisted of a tin cylinder divided into 
several small cells and suspended by a 
thread fixed to its axis, in a frame on 
which the hour distances fixed by trial 
were marked. It was so made that the 
water passed slowly from one cell to the 
next and as it did so it changed the center 
of gravity of the cylinder and set it in 
motion so as to indicate the time on the 
frame. Made about 1690. 

Wallingford's — Built in 1326 in St. 
Alban's Monastery. It showed besides 
the hours, the apparent motion of the sun, 
the ebb and flow of tides, changes of moon, 
etc. It continued to run until the time of 
Henry VIII. Held by some to have been a 
mere planetarium. 

Wells Cathedral — Clock built by 
Peter Lightfoot, A. D. 1340 at Glaston- 
bury and removed to Wells Cathedral 
during the Reformation, after the disso- 
lution of the Glastonbury monastery. In 
1835 it was again removed to the South 
Kensington museum. At that time the 
worn-out works were replaced by a new 
train, but the dial and knights were re- 
tained. The dial is divided into twenty- 
four hours and shows the motion of the sun 
and moon. On its summit are eight armed 
knights tilting at one another, lance at 
rest by a double rotary motion. 

Westminster — A clock said to have 
been erected at Westminster with the pro- 
ceeds of a fine imposed upon one of the 
Chief Justices about 1288. About 1365 
Edward III had a stone clock tower 
erected at Westminster. This tower con- 
tained a clock which struck the hours on 
a great bell. It also contained other bells. 
This tower was razed by the Roundhead 
mob about 1650. Later a dial with the 
motto "Discite justiam monite" was 
placed on the site. The bell "Great Tom" 
was given to St. Paul's about the begin- 
ning of the 18th Century. The present 
Westminster clock is made after plans by 
E. B. Denison (Sir Edmund Beckett) and 
made by E. J. Dent. The bell is called 
"Big Ben." It is claimed to be the best 
timekeeper of its kind in the world. It was 



»&263S- 



Appendix E 



for use in this clock that Denison in- 
vented his gravity escapement. 

Wimborne — A very old clock at Wim- 
borne in Dorsetshire, much like the Wells 
Cathedral clock. By some authorities be- 
lieved also to have been planned by Peter 
Lightfoot. 

Clock-Setters — During the early his- 
tory of turret clocks, for each one was 
employed a caretaker called the "setter." 
That such an official was needed indi- 
cates that they were more or less un- 
dependable. 

Cock — A horizontal bracket. See: Bal- 
ance Cock; Escape Cock; Pendulum Cock; 
Potance. 

Collet — A collar or flange on a cylin- 
drical piece of metal. Any part of such 
cylinder of greater diameter than the rest. 
Sometimes of the same piece of metal; 
sometimes fitted friction tight upon it. 

Compensation — The provision made in 
a clock or watch to counteract the ex- 
pansion and contraction due to variations 
of temperature. In the clock it is applied 
to the pendulum; in the watch to the 
balance. 

Compensation Balance — 
A balance corrected for errors 
caused by variations in tem- 
perature. The type in most 
general use was invented by 
Thomas Earnshaw in the second half 
of the 18th century. The double rim of 
this balance is constructed of brass and 
steel soldered together in the form of a 
cut ring, the brass on the outside. When 
heat, elongating the balance ring, causes 
it to vibrate more slowly, the brass, ex- 
panding more than the steel, bends the 
free ends of the cut rim toward the center, 
thus decreasing the diameter of the bal- 
ance and quickening the vibration. On 
the other hand, when cold, contracting the 
ring tends to quicken the vibration of the 
balance, the contraction of the brass rim 
draws the free end outward, making the 
diameter larger and the vibration slower 
in consequence. The compensation bal- 
ance is also made with brass as the inner 
metal and aluminum outside. 

Compensation Curb — A laminated 
bar of brass and steel or aluminum and 
brass fixed at one end, the free end carry- 
ing the curb pins that regulate the length 




IJUUUUUUUUl 



of the balance spring. Common in old 
watches but not now in use. 

Compensation Pendulum — A pend- 
ulum so constructed that the distance 
between the point of suspension and the 
center of oscillation remains constant in 
all temperatures. See; Pendulum, Grid- 
iron and Pendulum^ Mercurial Compensa- 
tion. 

Contrate Wheel — 
A wheel whose cogs are 
parallel to its axis and 
whose axis is at right 
T^ — 7i angles to the axis or the 
wheel into which it 
gears. A crown wheel. 

Corrosion — The eating or wearing 
away of metals by slow degrees through 
chemical action. 

Countersink — To enlarge the outer 
end of a hole for the reception of the head 
of a screw, bolt, etc. The term is also ap- 
plied to the tool with which the counter- 
sink is formed. 

Coventry — A municipal, county, and 
parliamentary borough of Warwickshire, 
England. One of the important watch- 
making centers of Great Britain. 

Crown Wheel — A wheel whose teeth 
project at fight angles to the plane of the 
wheel. A contrate wheel. The escape 
wheel of the verge escapement is an illus- 
tration. 

Crutch — ^A light rod in a clock de- 
scending from the pallet arbor and ending 
in a fork which embraces the pendulum 
rod. It transmits the motion of the pallet 
to the pendulum. 

Ctesibus — ^A famous Greek mechani- 
cian who lived in Alexandria about 130 
B. C. Although his was not the first 
clepsydra as is claimed by some it was an 
ingenious and interesting one. Believed to 
have first applied toothed wheels to 
clepsydrae about 140. B. C. 

Curb Pins — See Banking Pins. 

CusiN, Charles — ^A watchmaker from 
Autun, Burgundy, who laid the founda- 
tion for the Swiss watch industry in 
Geneva in 1587. It grew very slowly at 
first — in 1687 having only one hundred 
watchmakers with three hundred as- 
sistants. In 1760 there were at Geneva 
eight hundred watchmakers with 5,000 to 
6,000 assistants. 



-&264^ 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



Custer, Jacob D.— (1809-1879.) A 
Pennsylvania clockmaker in 1831; he was 
one of the early makers of watches in 
America in 1840. However, his work was 
not important commercially, for he pro- 
duced only about a dozen watches. A very 
ingenious man, who,it is said, made every- 
thing from a steam engine to his own shoes. 
He made hundreds of the clock movements 
which at that period were used to revolve 
the lanterns in lighthouses. 

Cycle of the Sun — A period of 
twenty-eight years, after which the days 
of the week again fall on the same days of 
the month as during the first year of the 
former cycle. It has no relation to the 
sun's course but was invented for the 
purpose of finding out the days of the 
month on which the Sundays fall during 
each year of the cycle. Cycles of the sun 
date from nine years before the Christian 
era. 

Cycloid — A curve generated by a given 
point in the circumference of a circle 
which is rolled along a straight line al- 
ways in the same place. Example: The 
curve traced by any point in the rim of a 
wheel which travels in a straight line 
along a level road. 

Cylinder Escapement — See: Escape- 
ment, Cylinder. 

Cylinder Plugs — Plugs fitted into the 
ends of the cylinder of a cylinder escape- 
ment. Their outer extremities are formed 
into the pivots on which the cylinder 
rotates. 

DAMASKEEN — ^To decoratc a metal by 
inlaying other metals or jewels, or 
by etching designs upon its surface. To be 
distinguished from snailing, 
with which it is often con- 
founded. 

Day — The time of one complete revolu- 
tion of the earth on its axis. The actual 
length of this day is continually changing 
owing to the eccentricity of the earth's 
orbit and the angle of the ecliptic. The 
mean solar day is 24 hours. The sidereal 
day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.099 seconds. 

Day, Nautical — The nautical day be- 
gins when the sun is on the meridian and 
eight bells are struck. The day is divided 
into "afternoon watch" or four hours, two 
"dog watches" of two hours each, then 



"middle watch," "night watch," "morn- 
ing watch" and "forenoon watch," each 
of four hours, completing the day. 

Denison, Edmund Beckett — Sir Ed- 
mund Beckett — Lord Grimthorpe. Born 
1816. A lawyer by profession, and the 
inventor of the gravity escapement for 
turret clocks; also an authoritative writer 
on horological subjects. He designed and 
planned the Westminster clock said to be 
the best timekeeper of its kind ia the 
world. Died 1905. 

Dennison, Aaron L. — Born in Free- 
port, Me., in 1812. Died Birmingham, 
England, January 9, 1898. At eighteen he 
was apprenticed to a watchmaker. Later 
in working at the trade, he was impressed 
with the inaccuracies which existed in the 
best handmade watches. This, with a visit 
to the Springfield Armory, gave him his 
idea of machine-made watches with inter- 
changeable parts. He interested Edward 
Howard in the project, and having found 
the needed capital they started in the busi- 
ness and laid the foundation of what is 
now the Waltham Watch Company. 
Dennison has been called the "father of 
American Watchmaking" tho there 
seems ground for the claim that he shares 
that honor with Edward Howard. ^__ 

Depthing — The technical name for the 
proper adjusting or spacing of the gearing 
in a watch. 

Detent — The device which halts, and 
releases, at the proper instant the escape- 
ment of a clock or chronometer. See: 
Escapement. 

dE ViCK, dE WyCK, or dE WiECK, 

Henry — A German clockmaker who, in 
1364, made the first turret clock of which 
reliable information and description re- 
mains. The clock was made for Charles V. 
See: Clocks, Interesting Old — De Fick's. 

Dial — Commonly called the face of the 
watch — made of gold or silver or other 
metal or of enamel, with the required 
figures — in the United States one to 
twelve upon it in a contrasting color. See 
also. Sun-dial. 

Dial Feet — Short wires soldered to the 
back of the dial of a watch or clock which 
hold it in place by fitting into holes in the 
pillar plate. 

Dial of Ahaz — A sun-dial belonging 
to Ahaz, King of Judea 742-727 B. C, 



*&265B- 



Appendix E 



mention of which occurs twice in the 
Scriptures — II Kings, XX: 9-11, and 
Isaiah XXXVIII: 8. It is behaved that 
one of his Babylonian astrologers con- 
structed it for him. 

Dial Plate — See Lower Plate. 

Dial, Sun — See Sun-dial. 

Dial Wheels — The wheels constitut- 
ing the motion work of a watch. 

Diurnal — In an astronomical sense, 
, pertaining to a period covering a mean 
solar day. See: Solar Time. 

Dog Screw — A screw with an eccentric 
head used to attach a watch movement to 
a dome case. 

Dog-Watch — A nautical term for two 
daily two-hour periods of watching 
aboard ship. The first begins at 4 P. M., 
the other at 6 P. M. 

Dolmen— A sacred instrument used for 
astronomical purposes at certain critical 
periods of the year; formed of four stones 
at the cardinal points and a leaning stone 
crossing diagonally and forming with the 
east stone a sacred "creep-way." The solar 
hours were indicated by the shadow of the 
leaning stone touching various prominent 
points or edges. One at Camp, England, is 
prehistoric. 

Dome — ^The inner case of a watch which 
snaps on the band of a case. 

Dome-Case — A case in which the inner 
case or dome snaps to the band of the case. 

DoNDi, Giacomo — Born at Padua, 
Italy, in 1298. In 1344 he set up at Padua 
a famous clock which became a model for 
later clocks and which earned for him the 
surname, "Orologio." 

Double Bottom Case — A watch case 
in which the inner cover or bottom is made 
solid with the middle. The vogue in 
English cases for a long time; now almost 
obsolete. 

Double-Sunk Dial — A dial in which 
there are two sinks; one for the hour hand, 
and a deeper one for the seconds hand. 

Draw — 1. The force which holds the 
lever against its bank, due chiefly to the 
angle of the locking face of the pallet stone 
2. The angle of the locking faces of pallets 
in the lever escapement. 

Driver — Of two wheels working to- 
gether, the one which imparts the power. 
The driven wheel is termed the follower. 



Driving Wheel — In a clock the wheel 
on the main arbor which drives the whole 
train. 

Drop — That part of the motion of the 
escape wheel when it is not in contact with 
the pallet. 

Drum — The cylinder, or barrel, on the 
main arbor in a clock on which the driving 
cord winds, raising the weight, when the 
clock is being wound. 

Dummy Watch — (Fausse Montre.) 
About 1770 it became the fashion to wear\ 
two watches. But because two reaP; 
watches were too expensive for most peo- ' 
pie, the custom grew up for having one 
sham watch — usually worn on the right 
side. These were called "dummy 
watches" or "fausse montres." 

Earnshaw, Thomas — 1749-1829. An 
eminent English watchmaker who 
invented the spring detent escapement 
and the compensation balance, both es- 
sentially the same as are now used in 
chronometers. He first soldered brass and 
steel together for the balance instead of 
riveting them. 

East, Edward — Watchmaker to 
Charles I and an eminent horologist. He 
was one of the ten original assistants 
named in the charter of the Clockmakers' 
Company and at once took a leading part 
in their proceedings. He was elected mas- 
ter in 1664 and 1682. He was the only 
treasurer ever appointed by that com- 
pany. He died probably about 1693. 
East's watches were often presented as 
prizes by Charles in tennis tournaments. 

Edward VI — King of England from 
1546 to 1553. Said to have been the first 
Englishman to wear a watch. 

Electric Clock — A clock in which the 
pallets moved electrically from a distant 
mechanism drive the escape wheel and 
the hands. 

Ecliptic — That plane passing through 
the center of the sun in which lies the 
orbit of the earth. Also used to designate 
the apparent path of the sun in the heav- 
ens. 

Elgin — A city in lUinois, U. S. A., in 
which is located the Elgin National Watch 
Company — one of the largest factories in 
the United States. 



-§266S* 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



End-Shake — Freedom of pivots to 
move endways. Necessary in a watch or 
clock because there is no force to spare and 
a tight pivot would stop the movement 

y Enp-Stone — A small disc of jewel 
/ against which the end of a pivot sets. See 
^--Capped Jewel. 

End-Stop — In a watch the same as end- 
<-stone. 

Engaging Friction — Friction which 
results when the teeth of two wheels gear- 
ing together come into action before 
reaching the line of centers — that is, a line 
drawn from center to center of the gearing 
wheels. 

Engine-Turning — A pattern of curved 
lines cut into metal for decoration. Intro- 
duced about 1770 by Francis Guerint of 
Geneva. The earliest specimens were cut 
very deep but shallower cutting soon be- 
came the rule. 

Engraving — A form of ornamenting 
metals in which the design is cut into the 
metal. In "Champ-leve" engraving the 
ground is cut away leaving the design in 
relief. 

Epact — The excess in time of the solar 
year over the period of 12 lunar months, 
.^ amounting to about 11 days. The new 
moons will thus fall about ll days earlier 
in each succeeding year. In a' calendar so 
arranged 30 days are taken off every 
fourth year, as an intercalary month, the 
moon having revolved once in that time, 
and the three days remaining would be 
the epact. The epact thus continues to 
vary until at the end of nineteen years the 
new moons return as at first. 

Epicycloid — A curve generated by any 
point in the circumference of a circle as it 
rolls on the outside of the circumference 
of a fixed circle. This curve is the best for 
the face of the teeth of a driving wheel. 

Equation Clocks — An obsolete form 
of clock which showed true solar or sun- 
dial time instead of mean solar, or average 
time. 

Equation of Time — ^The difference 
between true time and mean, or averaged 
time. There are four days in the Gregorian 
year when the true time and mean time 
agree, and the equation of time is zero: 
These are December 24, April IS, June 15, 
and August 31. Between the first two 



m 



dates and the last two dates, true time is 
earlier than mean time; for the other two 
periods of the year it is later. 

Escape Cock — The bracket which 
supports the upper ends of the escape 
wheel and pallet staff arbors. 

Escapement — The device in a watch 
or clock which regulates the motion of the 
train thus distributing the power of the 
main-spring. It communicates the motive 
power to the balance or pendulum. Es- 
capements are of three classes: recoil, 
dead, or dead-beat; and detached. 

Escapement, Anchor — 
The recoil escapement, in- 
vented by Hooke, used in 
most house clocks. A name 
also applied to one kind of 
Lever Escapement with an 
unusually wide impulse pin. 
The recoil escapement is one in which each 
tooth of the escape wheel, after it comes 
to rest, is moved backward by the pallets. 
Altho one of the easiest escapements to 
set out correctly the pallets are often im- 
properly formed making an escapement 
which gives indifferent service. As a time- 
keeper the anchor escapement is inferior 
to the dead-beat escapement. 

Escapement, 
Chronometer — A 
detached escape- 
ment in which the 
escape wheel is 
ked on a stone 
carried m a detent, and in which the teeth 
of the escape wheel impart an impulse to 
a pallet on the balance staff with every 
alternate vibration. Used in Marine 
Chronometers. 

Escapement, Crown-Wheel — Of the 
recoil type, and the earliest known es- 
capement; to be found in Henry de 
Wyck's clock. Not suitable for watches. 
Practically the same principle as Verge 
or Vertical Escapement used in watches 
for so many years. 

Escapement, Cylinder or 
Horizontal — Invented by 
Thomas Tompion in 1695 — 
later improved and brought 
,into general use by Graham. It 
dispensed with the then com- 
mon vertical crown-wheel — hence the 
term "horizontal" and permitted thinner 





-§2679- 



Appendix E 




watches. This escapement is frictional, 

t-, the balance being carried on a 

jP^^-^i^ hollow cylinder whose bore is 

'^Z large enough to admit the 

d ^l I teeth of the escape wheel. The 

' cylinder is cut away where the 

teeth enter and the impulse is 

given by the wedge shaped teeth striking 

against the edge of the cylinder as they 

enter and leave. Used at this time in the 

cheaper Swiss watches. 

Escapement, Dead-Beat 
— Any escapement in which 
the pallet face is so formed 
that the escape wheel re- 
mains dead or motionless 
during the supplementary 
arc of the balance or swing of the pendu- 
lum. As invented by George Graham, 
the wheel is much the same as the wheel 
in the anchor escapement, the difference 
lying in the shape of the pallets. Each 
pallet has a driving face and a sliding 
face. It is so arranged that the impulse is 
given the pendulum at the midpoint of its 
swing thus allowing the swing to adapt 
itself to the impulse and keep the time 
constant. The pallets are faced with 
jewels so that there is slight friction. 
Used in high grade clocks such as regu- 
lators and astronomical clocks. 

Escapement, Detached — Any escape- 
ment in which the balance or pendulum 
is for some time during each vibration 
free from the pressure of the train. De- 
tached escapements are used in chro- 
nometers, most watches and in turret 
clocks. They are of value in any move- 
ment where the motive power varies 
greatly — hence in turret clocks. Ex- 
amples: Chronometer, lever, and gravity 
escapements. 

Escapement, Double 
Three-Legged Gravity — In- 
vented in 1854 by E. B. Deni- 
son, Esq., for the great clock at 
the Houses of Parliament. It is 
the best escapement for very 
large clocks where the hands are 
exposed to the action of the 
wind and snow, because it ad- 
mits of great driving power in 
the movement without its 
sensibly affecting the escapement as 
would be the case in the dead-beat type. 
The impulse to the pendulum is given by 





the weight of the lever arms falling 
through a given distance and is therefore 
constant. This escapement consists of 
two gravity impulse pallets pivoted in a 
line with the bending point of the pendu- 
lum. There is a locking wheel made of 
two thin plates of three teeth each. Be- 
tween these plates are the three pins that 
lift the pallets. The locking is effected by 
blocks screwed to the front of one pallet 
and the back of the other. Impulse is 
given by the pallets in turn striking the 
pendulum rod. The pendulum rod serves 
to unlock the wheel. The arrangement is 
such that the lifting pins have a little 
free run each time. Since the pallets are 
always lifted the same distance they give 
a constant impulse to the pendulum. 

Escapement, Duplex — 
Invented by Hook; later im- 
proved by Tyrer. Very ac- 
curate but as originally made 
was affected by any sudden 
motion, and hence of little use in watches. 
The escape wheel has two sets of teeth. 
Those farthest from the center lock the 
wheel by pressing on a hollow ruby cylin- 
der fitted round the balance staff and 
notched so as to permit the passing of the 
teeth as the balance moves in a direction 
opposite to the wheel's motion. The sec- 
ond set stand up from the face of the 
wheel and one gives impulse to the pallet 
every time a tooth leaves the notch. This 
is not a detached escapement, but there is 
little friction. As improved this escape- 
ment was used in the famous Waterbury 
watches. 

Escapement, Foliot — A form of 
escapement actuated by a foliot balance. 
See Foliot, 

Escapement, Four-Legged 
Gravity — Invented by E. B. 
Denison (Sir Edmund Beckett). 
The same in principle as the 
Double Three-Legged escape- 
ment, only it has but one 
escape wheel with four teeth or 
legs instead of two wheels with 
three legs each. The wheel has 
two sets of lifting pins — one 
acting on each pallet. Occasion- 
ally used in regulators and other clocks 
with a seconds pendulum, but of doubt- 
ful, if any, advantage over the Graham 
dead-beat escapement. 




-§2683- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 




Escapement, Frictional — Any 
escapement in which the balance is never 
free from the escapement. Examples; The 
Cyhnder, Duplex and Verge types. 

Escapement, Gravity — An escape- 
ment which gives impulse to the pendulum 
by means of a weight falling through a 
constant distance. Of use in turret and 
other exposed clocks where the hands' 
movements are affected by wind, rain, 
and snow. See subtitles under these 
headings: Double Three-legged Gravity; 
Single Three-legged Gravity; Four-legged 
Gravity; Six-legged Gravity. 

Escapement 
Lever — Invented 
by Thomas Mudge 
about 1765. It is 
the preferred es- 
capement for 
watches because of 
the certainty of its performance. Possibly 
inferior to the chronometer escapement as 
a timekeeper. Its most noticeable defect 
is the necessity of applying oil to the 
pallets, the thickening of which affects the 
action. There are many other kinds of 
lever escapements. The Mudge escape- 
ment was essentially like the modern 
Double Roller. The connection between 
the balance and the escape wheel is made 
by a lever to which the pallets are fast- 
ened, and into the forked end of which 
plays the ruby pin which is carried on a 
roller on the same staff as the balance. 
Each pallet has an impulse face and a 
locking face. The impulse is given by the 
escape wheel tooth striking the impulse 
face of a pallet and is communicated to 
the balance by the lever, raised by the 
pallet's movement striking the ruby pin 
in the roller. This ruby pin also serves to 
unlock the pallets by causing the lever to 
lift them in turn. This escapement is of 
the detached type. The action of the 
lever is kept within the desired limits by 
banking pins. 

Escapement, Lever — Club Tooth — 
An escapement like the Table Roller in 
the action of the lever and roller, but dif- 
fers in the pallet action. The ijnpulse 
planes are partly on the teeth and partly 
on the pallet. This is the standard watch 
escapement of today. 

Escapement, Crank Lever — An es- 
capement with a small roller having a 




tooth like a pinion leaf projecting from its 
circumference. This tooth acts in a square 
notch cut in the end of the lever. The 
lever is formed like a fork the two points 
of which act as safety pins against the edge 
of the roller to prevent the lever from get- 
ting out of action with the roller. It neces- 
sitated very careful construction and was 
not so good as the Double Roller or Table 
Roller. 

Escapement, Lever — Dou- 
ble Roller — This escapement 
has two rollers on the balance 
staff, the large one carrying the 
balance staff and the small one 
used for a safety roller only. The 
best form of lever escapement but more 
delicate, expensive, and difficult to make 
than the Table Roller; hence not so much 
used as the latter. 

Escapement, Patent Detached Lev- 
er — Introduced in 1766 by Thomas 
Mudge, but neglected for years thereafter 
even by Mudge himself. It was in some of 
its parts the model of the best form of 
lever escapement— the Double Roller. 
The first pallets had no "draw" on the 
locking faces which rendered the escape- 
ment peculiarly sensitive to jolt and jar. 
This may have suggested to Mudge the 
addition of the small roller, whose worth 
has been since unquestionably demon- 
strated. 

Escapement, Lever — Pin-Pallet — A 
lever escapement with round pins for 
pallets, and the inclines on the escape 
teeth. Used in alarm clocks. 

Escapement, Rack-Lever — Invented 
by Abbe Hautefeuille in 1734. Afterward 
made and improved by Berthoud and by 
Peter Litherland, who obtained a patent 
for it in 1794. It consisted of anchor 
shaped pallets on whose axis was fixed 
a rack, or segment of a toothed wheel 
which geared into a pinion on the axis of 
the balance. The balance was thus never 
free from the train and good timekeeping 
was made impossible. It is not now in use. 
n r-"^~~^ Escapement, Lever-Re- 
^-^>=5^ 1 silient — Invented by F. J. 
_^Cole about 1870. A form of 
'"lever escapement designed to 
obviate the evils of overbanking. The 
points of the escape-wheel teeth are bent 
toward the locking faces of the pallets, the 
bend in the tooth acts as the banking and 



r)SA 



-&269B' 



Appendix E 




no pins are required. It was abandoned 
because expensive to make and the danger 
of overbanking is not considerable. 

Escapement, Lever — Table Roller 
— Excellent and very simple and the most 
common form today. It differs from the 
crank lever only in the action of the roller. 
The impulse pin instead of projecting 
beyond the edge of the roller is set within 
its circumference and raised above its 
plane. 

Escapement, Lever — 
Two Pin — A form of Lever 
Escapement in which the un- 
locking and impulse actions 
were formerly divided between 
two small gold pins in the 
roller and one in the lever. 
Later the two roller pins were discarded, 
and one broad jewel pin substituted. 

Escapement — Pin Wheel — 
Invented by Lepaute about 
1750. Similar in action to the 
dead-beat. A good and simple 
escapement for large clocks. 

J'' ^7 The impulse is given the pendu- 
\yy lum through the pallets by 
'i-!-!-^ pins which stand out from the 
face of the escape wheel. 
Lepaute made these pins semi-circular 
and had his pallets of equal length acting 
on opposite sides of the wheel. Sir E. 
Beckett cut away part of the front of the 
pins which allows the pallets to act as 
in the diagram. The resting faces are 
arcs of a circle. It has been superseded by 
the gravity escapement for large clocks 
and is inferior to the dead-beat for small. 

Escapement, Recoil — Any escape- 
ment in which the pallets actually force 
the escape wheel to turn backwards a 
trifle with each beat of the balance. 
Cheap and easy to make but inferior as 
timekeepers to the detached or dead-beat 
types. 

Escapement, Right-Angled — A lever 
escapement so set that lines drawn be- 
tween the centers of the balance, pallets, 
and escape wheel would form a right 
angle. See Escapement, straight-line. 

Escapement, Single-Beat — An es- 
capement such as the Duplex, or Chro- 
nometer, whose escape wheel moves only 
at alternate beats of the balance or 
pendulum. 






Escapement, Single 
Three-Legged Grav- 
ity — Consists of two pal- 
lets and one three-legged 
locking wheel. Instead 
of the three pins for lift- 
ing as in the Double 
Three - Legged Gravity 
escapement there is a 
triangular steel block which acts against 
large friction rollers, pivoted one on each 
pallet. 

Escapement, Six - 
Legged Gravity — A mod- 
ification of the three-legged 
gravity escapement. The 
locking wheel has six teeth. 
One of the pallet arms is 
neutral and gives no im- 
pulse, hence impulse is given 
only at each alternate vi- 
bration. A much Hghter 
driving weight than for the 
Double Three-legged Gravity escape- 
rnent will suffice for this, since the rota- 
tions of the escape wheel required are only 
half as many. 

Escapement, Straight-Line — An es- 
capement of the lever type in which the 
escape wheel, pallets and balance are all 
in a straight line; an arrangement favored 
by the Swiss. 

Escapement, Verge 
-Also called "Crown- 
wheel," or Vertical es- 
capement. The earliest 
form of escapement on record. The in- 
ventor is not known, but the escapement 
was used on de Vick's clock. (1364.) It 
was used almost exclusively up to 1750 in 
spite of its manifest inaccuracy. The verge 
is a frictional recoil escapement. It con- 
sists of a crown-wheel, with eleven, thir- 
teen, or fifteen teeth, shaped like those of 
a rip saw, and with its axis set at right 
angles to the pallets axis, or verge, which 
carries the balance. The verge is a slender 
cylinder as small as compatible with the 
required strength, from which project 
the pallets, two flat steel "flags" — at an 
angle to each other varying from 90° to 
115°. The wheel runs in a watch in a plane 
at right angles to the face. Any variation 
in the motive power causes a variation in 
the arc of the balance swing. Therefore, 
since the time of oscillation depends on 




-@270B- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



the arc of the swing, the time-keeping 
qualities were directly affected. This gave 
rise to the invention of the stack-freed 
and fusee, both contrivances to equalize 
the power of the mainspring. In spite of 
the many defects the verge escapement 
was one of the great inventions because 
the first escapement, and was used for 
centuries before superior kinds were de- 
vised. It necessitated thick and bulky 
watches. 

Escapement, Virgule — 
/p^ An early form of escapement 
)o>=Jp invented about 1660 by Abbe 
Hautefeuille. Its action can be 
readily understood from the diagram. 

Escape Pinion — The pinion on the 
escape-wheel arbor. 

Escape WnEEL^The last wheel of a 
train: it gives impulse to the balance, 
indirectly. Also called scape wheel. 
Easily identified by teeth resembling 
those of a circular saw. 

Face — 1. Of a watch or clock is the dial. 
2. Of the tooth of a wheel, that por- 
tion beyond the pitch line. 

Facio, Nicolas — A Geneva watch- 
maker who invented the art of piercing 
> jewels for use in watches, and in May, 
1705, obtained a patent therffor in Lon- 
don. In December of the same year when 
he petitioned for a more extended patent 
he was opposed by the Clockmakers' 
Company, who produced in evidence proof 
that Facio was not first in this use of 
jewels, in an old watch of Ignatius Hugge- 
ford's with an amethyst mounted on the 
cock of the balance wheel. Facio's petition 
was denied. It was later discovered that 
Huggeford's jewel had nothing to do with 
the mechanism of the watch. 

Favre, Perret E. — In 1876 the chief 
commissioner in the Swiss Department 
and a member at that time of the Inter- 
national Jury on Watches at the Centen- 
nial Exhibition at Philadelphia. On his 
return home he was very emphatic in his 
endorsement of the American method of 
manufacture as compared to the Swiss. 

Fitch E. C. — Made president of the 
Waltham Watch Co., in 1886. His long 
experience in watch case and movement 
making and his commercial training made 
his judgment on matters relating to 



watchmaking of value. He was the in- 
ventor of the screw bezel case. 

Flank — The flank of a wheel or pinion 
is the part lying between the pitch circle 
and the center. 

Flirt — Any device for causing the 
sudden movement of a mechanism. 

Fly — ^A speed regulating device or 
governor consisting of a fan or two vanes 
upon a rotating shaft. Used in the striking 
part of clocks. By some believed to have 
been used on the earliest clocks — before 
the verge escapement — to check a too 
rapid descent of the weight. 

Fly Pinion — The pinion in a clock that 
carries the fly: a part of the striking 
mechanism. 

Fob — Properly a watch 
\^ pocket in the waistband 
( -, of trousers. Commonly ap- 
i,! plied to the end of a chain or 
i|j ribbon which is attached to 
|(2)|)/|the watch and hangs free 
4sss/ from the pocket. One of the 
early examples was attached 
to a watch made for Oliver 
Cromwell in 1625 by John 
Midwall in Fleet Street. 

FOLIOT — A 
straight armed 
balance with 
weights used 
as one of the 
earliest clock 
regulators. De 
Vick's clock is 
one example of 
it. 

F o L I o T 

B A L a N C E 

See Foliot. 
Follower — Of two wheels geared to- 
gether, the one to which the driver im- 
parts motion is called the follower. 

Fork — The fork shaped end of the lever 
into which plays the roller jewel. 

Fourth Wheel — The wheel in a watch 
that drives the escape pinion and to whose 
arbor the seconds hand is attached. 

Frame — The plates or plate and bars of 
a watch or clock which support the pivots 
of the train. 

Free Spring — A balance spring not 





-e27iB* 



Appendix E 




controlled by curb pins. Used in chronom- 
eters and other fine time pieces where the 
spring is an overcoil. 

Fromanteel, Ahasuerus — A clock- 
maker of Dutch extraction — maker of 
steeple clocks in East Smithfield. The 
family of Fromanteels were celebrated as 
having been the first to introduce the 
pendulum clocks into England. Their 
claim has since been contested in favor of 
Harris and Hooke. 

Full Plate — A model in which the top 
plate is circular in form — the balance be- 
ing above this plate. Used now m 18 size 
watches for railroad and other hard usage. 
They are made only in limited quantities. 

Fusee — Invented by 
Jacob Zech of Prague 
about 1525. Consists of 
a specially grooved 
..^, cone-shaped pulley in- 

^ terposed between the 

mainspring barrel and the great or driving 
wheel of a watch or clock. The connection 
between the barrel and fusee was first 
made by a cord or catgut, later by a chain. 
In winding the spring the cord is drawn 
from the barrel on to the fusee — the first 
coil on the larger end. Thus the main- 
spring when fully wound uncoils the cord 
first from the smaller end of the fusee; and 
as it runs down gets the benefit of in- 
creased leverage by reason of the greater 
diameter of the lower part of the fusee. 
An excellent adjustment of the pressure 
on the center pinion can be made in this 
way. The fusee has been abandoned in 
watches to allow of thinness, but is still 
used in chronometers and clocks. 

Fusee Cap — ^A thin steel plate with a 
projecting nose on the smaller end of the 
fusee: a part of the mechanism to stop the 
fusee when the last coil of the chain is 
wound thereon. 

Fusee Chain — A very delicate steel 
chain connecting the barrel with the fusee 
of a watch, chronometer or clock. It re- 
placed the catgut originally used and was 
first introduced by Gruet of Geneva about 
1664. 

Fusee Sink — The sink cut in the top 
plate of a watch to give space for the 
fusee. 



Galileo, Galilei — Commonly called 
"Galileo." A famous Italian scientist 
born in 1564 who discovered, among many 
other things, the isochronism of the 
pendulum vibrating through long or short 
arcs. The story goes that he noticed that 
a swinging chandelier in a certain ca- 
thedral took the same length of time to 
each vibration whether in long or short 
arcs — timing them by his pulse. He seems 
never to have applied this principle to 
clocks, although he issued an essay on the 
subject in 1639. 

Galileo, Vincentis — Son of the great 
astronomer, born about 1600. He aided 
his father in experiments and gave special 
attention to the application of the pendu- 
lum to clocks. He is claimed by some to 
have been the first to so apply the pendu- 
lum, in 1649, but this is disputed in favor 
of Richard Harris of London. 

Geneva — ^A city in Switzerland in 
which watchmaking was first established 
in that country. It is the center of the 
"hand" industry, and the city is honey- 
combed with garret-workers — so-called — 
making parts. 

Gerbert (Pope Sylvester ii) — Born 
in Belliac, Auvergne, in 920. In 990 
Gerbert made some sort of a clock which 
attained wide fame. Some authorities 
claim that it was a clock moved by 
weights and wheels and some even claim 
for it a verge escapement. On the 
other hand, other authorities state posi- 
tively that that story is a myth and that 
Gerbert's horologe was a sun-dial. It 
seems pretty well accepted that there was 
no escapement used, however, until more 
than two centuries after Gerbert's time. 

German Silver — ^An alloy of copper, 
nickel, and zinc — copper predominating. 
Really a white brass. 

GiMBAL — A contrivance resembling a 
universal joint permitting a suspended 
object to tip freely in all directions. Ma- 
rine chronometers are supported in their 
cases or boxes by gimbals. It was first 
applied to chronometers by Huyghens. 

Gnomon — ^A simple and 
probably the most ancient 
instrument for marking time 
consisting simply of a staff or 
'pillow fixed perpendicularly 
in a sunny place — time being reckoned by 




-§2725- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 




the- changing length of the shadow or 
by its angular movement. In more recent 
times the title "gnomon" was applied to 
the style of the sun-dial. 

Gnomonics — The art of constructing 
and setting sun-dials taught especially 
in the seventeenth century. 

GoDDARD, Luther — Born at Shrews- 
bury, Mass., February 28, 1762 — Died 
1842. He was the first American to manu- 
facture watches. He began in 1809 but 
unable to compete as to price with cheap 
foreign watches, retired after making 
about five hundred. 

Going-Barrel — 
The Swiss early 
abandoned the fu- 
see in watches and 
cut teeth around 
the outside of the 
main-spring barrel 
so as to drive the 
train direct. Such 
an arrangement is called a going-barrel. 
It made possible a thinner and much 
simpler watch. American makers quickly 
adopted this device, but the EngHsh long 
clung to the fusee. It is sometimes claimed 
that the French were the first to adopt the 
going-barrel. 

Going Fusee — A fusee with maintain- 
ing power attachment, so that the watch 
does not stop while being wound. In- 
vented by Harrison. 

Golden Number — Meton, an Athen- 
ian astronomer, discovered about 432 
B. C. that every nineteen years the new 
and full moons returned on the same days 
of the month. This period is the cycle of 
the moon, called the Golden Number be- 
cause the Greeks, to honor it, had it 
written in letters of gold. Anno Domini, 
the year of our Lord, fell on the second 
year of a lunar cycle. Hence, to find the 
Golden Number for any year, add 1 to the 
date (A. D.) and divide by 19. The re- 
mainder is the Golden Number for the 
year. 

Gold-Filled — A sheet of brass sand- 
wiched between two thin plates of gold 
and all brazed together. Gold-filled watch 
cases were introduced in America. They 
give very good wear. 

Graham, George, F. R. S. — An Eng- 
lish watchmaker and astronomer, born in 



Cumberland in 1675. Died 1751. He was 
an apprentice of Tompion and succeeded 
to Tompion's reputation as the best 
watchmaker of his time. He invented the 
mercurial compensation pendulum, the 
dead-beat escapement, and perfected the 
cyHnder escapement of Tompion and left 
it in practically its present form. He made 
ornamentation distinctly subsidiary to 
use. He was master of the Clockmakers' 
Company in 1722-23. He was buried with 
Tompion in Westminster Abbey. 

Great Tom — ^The great bell which 
struck the hours on the first clock at 
Westminster. It was afterwards trans- 
ferred to St. Paul's. 

Great Wheel — In a fusee watch the 
toothed wheel which transmits the power 
from the fusee to the center pinion. In 
a going-barrel watch it is represented by 
the toothed portion of the barrel drum. 

Greenwich Observatory — (England) 
Royal observatory founded 1675 to pro- 
mote astronomy and navigation. There is 
at this observatory a standard motor clock 
which is the center of a system of electric- 
ally controlled clocks scattered over the 
Kingdom, and which thus keeps official 
time as our Naval Observatory clock does 
for the United States. 

Grimthorpe — See Denison, E. B. 

Gruen, Dietrich — ^A Swiss watch- 
maker who with his son Fred first suc- 
ceeded in making a very thin watch. The 
Gruen watch factory at Cincinnati, Ohio, 
is unique in this country. The buildings 
and surroundings resemble those of 
Switzerland, and the method of manu- 
facture embodies more handwork than is 
common in the American system. 

Gruet — ^A Swiss who introduced chains 
for the fusee instead of catgut cord, in 
1664. They are still used for marine 
chronometers, some clocks, and the few 
fusee watches now made. 

Guard Pin — A pin in a lever escape- 
ment which prevents the pallets leaving 
the escape wheel when the hands of a 
watch are turned back. Also known as the 
"safety pin." 

Guild or Gild — An association of 
people occupied in kindred pursuits for 
mutual protection and aid. Watch and 
clockmakers belonged to the Black- 
smiths' Guild in England until 1631, 



*e-273B- 



Appendix E 



when the Clockmakers' Company was 
formed. In France the Clockmakers' Guild 
was powerful in 1544. 

Hair-Spring — Said by some to be a 
distinctly American term for the 
balance spring of a watch. But Wood 
(English) uses it in his "Curiosities of 
Clocks and Watches," 1866. However, it 
is not in common use outside of America. 
It is thought to have originated from the 
fact that in early times attempts were 
made to utilize hog-bristle for the balance 
spring. 

Half Plate — ^A watch in which the 
top plate covers but half of the pillar 
plate, the fourth wheel pinion being car- 
ried in a cock to allow the use of a larger 
balance. Now obsolete or nearly so. Re- 
placed by the bridge-model. 

Hall Mark — A stamp placed upon 
gold and silver articles by government 
officials after the metal therein has been 
assayed. 

Hands — ^The metal pointers which, 
moved by the train, indicate the time by 
pointing to the figures on the dial. At 
present there are always two, the hour and 
minute hands and frequently a seconds 
hand also. Clocks at first were made with 
only the hour hand; the minute hand was 
introduced when the use of the pendulum 
made timekeeping sufficiently accurate for 
the indication of such small divisions. 

Hanging Barrel — A going-barrel with 
its arbor supported only at the upper end. 

Harris, Richard — An English clock- 
maker for whom it is claimed that he 
made the first pendulum clock — set up at 
St. Paul's, Covent Garden, in 1641. Most 
authorities agree, however, that this honor 
belongs to Huyghens. 

Harrison, John — ^An English mech- 
anician born at Faulby in Yorkshire in 
1693. He made many improvements in the 
mechanism of clocks, the greatest of 
which was the compound pendulum. He 
won in 1761 a reward offered by Parlia- 
ment in 1714 for an instrument that would 
determine longitude within thirty marine 
miles Harrison's chronometer gave it 
within eighteen miles. He invented the 
going fusee, the gridiron compensation 
pendulum and suggested the idea for the 




compensation balance, afterward worked 
out by other watchmakers. Died 1776. 

Hautefeuille, John — (Abbe.) Born 
1647. Died 1724. He disputed success- 
fully Huyghens' claim to a prior invention 
of the steel balance spring. He is also 
credited with the invention about 1722 of 
the rack-lever escapement. 

Heart- Piece — The heart- 
shaped cam on the center- 
sseconds wheel of a chrono- 
graph, which causes the hand 
to fly back to zero. 

HelEj Peter — (See Henlein, Peter.) 
Some historians credit invention of first 
watch to Peter Hele. There is no doubt, 
however, that Hele and Henlein were one 
and the same. Preponderance of authority 
favors "Henlein" as the correct spelling 
of the name. 

Helical — Following the course of a 
helix or spiral. 

Heliotropion — See "Polos." 

Hemicycle — Form of sun-dial in which 
the shadow of a vertical pointer or 
"gnomon" is cast upon and moves around 
the inner surface of a half globe or sphere. 
Supposed to have been invented about 
350 B. C. (See Sun-Dial). Vitruvius, the 
Roman Engineer, ascribes invention to 
the Babylonian priest and astonomer, 
Berosus. 

Henlein, Peter — Sometimes called 
Peter Hele. A clockmaker of Nuremberg, 
who is believed to have made the first 
portable (pocket) clock or zvaich sometime 
early in the sixteenth century. Born 1480. 
Died about 1540. His clock was round, 
driven by a spring and had small wheels 
of steel. It was much larger than present 
day watches. 

Hollow Pinion — A ' pinion bored 
through the center. The center pinion in 
many watches is hollow. 

"Hon-Woo-Et-Low" or Copper Jars 
Dropping Water — A form of clepsydra 
at Canton, China, said to be between 
3000 and 4000 years old. It consists of 
four copper jars arranged on steps. Each 
jar drops water into the one below it until 
the last one, in which a bamboo float, 
indicates the time in a rude way. 

HooKE, Robert, M. D. — An English 
physician-philosopher born on the Isle 
of Wight in 1635. His accomplishments 



*§274S- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



were numerous. He claimed to have dis- 
covered the isochronism of the balance 
spring and its application to watches, 
though this was also claimed by Huyghens. 
He invented a pendulum timekeeper for 
finding the longitude at sea; devised the 
first wheel-cutting engine about 1670; and 
he invented the anchor escapement for 
clocks. His studies and inventions covered 
a wide field. He died in 1702. 

HojROLOGE, (Orologe), (Horologium) 
— ^A general term applied indiscriminately 
in old writings to any mechanism for 
measuring time. 

HOROLOGICAL INSTITUTE BrITISH 

An association of watchmakers founded in 
1858 for the purpose of advancing the 
horological arts. 

Horological Periodicals, American 
— American Jeweler, (Monthly), Chicago, 
111.; Goldsmith and Silversmith, 
(Monthly), New Haven, Conn.; Jeweler's 
Circular, (Weekly), New York,; Keystone 
(Monthly), Philadelphia, Pa.; Manufac- 
turing Jeweler, Providence, R. I.; Mid- 
Continent Jeweler, Kansas City, Mo.; 
National Jeweler, (Monthly), Chicago, 
111.; Northwestern Jeweler, St. Paul, 
Minn.; Pacific Goldsmith, (Monthly), 
San Francisco, Cal.; Trader and Canadian 
Jeweler, Toronto, Canada. 

Horologium — See Horologe. 

HoROLOGY^ — -The science of time-meas- 
urement or of the construction of time 
pieces. 

Hour — Now consisting of sixty min- 
utes or one twenty-fourth of an equinoc- 
tial day. Formerly one twelfth of the 
time between sunrise and sunset, and one 
twelfth of the time between sunset and 
sunrise; hence of different lengths for 
day and night in the different seasons. 
This required much adjustment of clocks; 
and automatic devices for such adjust- 
ment were in great demand. A standard 
hour of uniform length for all times and 
seasons was not adopted in Paris — the 
last place to change — until 1816. 

Hour-Glass — A device for measuring 
hours. It has two cone-shaped superim- 
posed glass globes connected at their 
apexes through a small opening. The 
glass contains just that quantity of sand, 
or mercury, as will flow in one hour 
through the opening from the upper 




globe to the lower. When it 
has run through the glass 
is reversed. See: SandGlass. 
Like the sun-dial and the 
clepsydra, the hour-glass is 
older than we know. Its use 
probably followed close up- 
on that of the clepsydra, or 
may even have preceded it 
in dry countries like Egypt 
and Babylonia, where sand 
was all about and water was not a thing 
to waste. Of its original forms there is 
no authentic record. Dry sand does not, 
like water, run faster or slower through 
a given opening according to the pressure 
from above; its rate is the same whether 
the upper glass is full or nearly empty. 
Also the hour-glass never needs to be 
refilled, but only to be reversed, and 
the same sand used over and over again. 
On the other hand, its convenience di- 
minished as its size increased. It was 
too clumsy for use if made large enough 
to run without attention for more than 
an hour or two; and in so large a glass 
there was more danger that the sand, 
however dry, might cake up and stop 
running. It must somehow have been 
transparent for convenient reading, be- 
cause sand can register the time only by 
its flow: it cannot be made to raise a float 
or work a pointer. But the Egyptians 
very early learned to manufacture glass, 
and there were other substances. A legend 
ascribes the invention of the sand-glass to 
Luitprand, a Carthusian monk of the 
Eighth Century A. D. But this, if there is 
any truth in the story at all, must have 
been some improvement or reinvention 
after the forgetfulness of the Dark Ages. 
The device is plainly shown in Greek 
sculptures antedating the Christian era. 
Nowadays the sand-glass has pretty much 
disappeared, except as a kitchen time- 
piece for boiling eggs and the like. 

Hour Hand — The hand of a watch or 
clock which indicates the hour: for long 
after clocks were first made, the only hand 
provided. 

Hour Wheel — ^The wheel which re- 
volves on the minute wheel or cannon 
pinion and carries the hour hand. 

Howard, Edward — Born at Hingham, 
Mass., October 6, 1813. Having served 
a regular apprenticeship in clockmaking 



-&275S* 



Appendix E 



he entered into partnership with D. P. 
Davis, at the age of 29, to make clocks. 
He was a clever mechanic and invented 
many pieces of mechanism, among them 
the swing rest. In 1849 he and Davis with 
A. L. Dennison and others organized the 
American Horologe Company for the 
manufacture of watches by machinery, 
and with the parts interchangeable — the 
American principle of today. Though 
they were not financially successful the 
American watch industry owes its present 
day success largely to this beginning by 
Edward Howard and Aaron L. Dennison. 
The first company developed into the 
present Waltham Company, and later 
Mr. Howard established the E. Howard 
Co., at Roxbury, but severed his con- 
nection with them in 1882 and retired 
from business. He died March 5, 1904. 

HuGGEFORD, Ignatius — An English 
watchmaker, one of whose watches was 
used to defraud Facio of his patent on 
the use of jewels in watches. See Facio, 
Nicolas. 

Hunter, or Hunting-Case — ^A watch 
case which has a solid metal cover over 
the dial. 

Hunter, George — Identified with 
watchmaking in America since about 1860 
— in the Waltham and Elgin Companies. 
He was general superintendent of the 
latter from 1872 to 1903, after which he 
was made consulting superintendent. 

HuYGHENS, Christian — ^A celebrated 
Dutch astronomer and mathematician 
born at The Hague, April 14, 1629. Al- 
though the honor is claimed for Richard 
Harris in 1641 and for Vincent Galileo in 
1649 it seems historically established that 
Huyghens in 1657 was the first to apply to 
clocks the theory of the isochronism of the 
pendulum which the great Galileo had 
discovered. In 1669 he published his im- 
portant work, "Horologium Oscilla- 
torium." In 1673 he made the first clock 
with concentric hour and minute hands. 
He died in 1695. 

Huyghens' Checks — ^The arc of a 
swinging pendulum is a segment of a circle. 
For perfect isochronism it should be a 
cycloidal segment. To accomplish this 
Huyghens fixed curved brass pieces called 
checks for the cord to strike against but 
he caused thereby a greater error than he 
remedied. This end was later accomplished 





by suspending the pendulum by means of 
a flat steel strip instead of a cord; a device 
credited to Robert Hooke. 

Hypocycloid — ^A curve 
generated by any point in 
the circumference of a circle 
which is rolled on the inner 
side of the circumference of 
a larger fixed circle. 

IDLER, Idle Wheel, or Intermediate 
Wheel — A toothed wheel used to con- 
nect driver and 
followerwheels 
so that both I 
shall rotate in 
the same di- 
rection. 

Impulse — ^The push transmitted to the 
pallet by the escape wheel. 

Impulse Pin — ^The jewel pin — usually' 
a ruby — on the table roller of the lever 
escapement, which playing into the fork 
of the lever transmits the impulse to the 
balance. 

Independent Center-Seconds — A 
watch peculiarly adapted to the use of the 
medical profession. It carries on a sep- 
arate train a long seconds hand in addi- 
tion to the hands of the ordinary watch 
which can be stopped without stopping 
the watch. 

Independent Seconds — ^A watch 
whose seconds hand is driven by a sepa- 
rate train. 

Ingersoll, Charles Henry — Secre- 
tary, Treasurer and General Manager of 
Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., watch manu- 
facturers, of New York City. Born at 
Delta, Eaton County, Michigan, October 
29, 1865, a son of Orville Boudinot and 
Mary Elizabeth (Beers) Ingersoll. At 
the early age of fifteen years he left home 
and went to New York City, where he 
entered the employ of his brother, Robert 
H.J who was then engaged in the business 
of manufacturing rubber stamps. Since 
1880 he has been continuously associated 
with his brother in various business 
enterprises and in the direction and man-^ 
agemtent of the Ingersoll organization. 
Married Eleanor Ramsey Bond of Brook- 
lyn, New York, July 5, 1898. Residence,' 
South Orange, New Jersey. 

Ingersoll, Robert Hawley — Found- 
er and President of Robt. H. Ingersoll 8f 
Bro., watch manufacturers, of New York 



'%2j6%' 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



City. Born December 26, 1859, of Orville 
Boudinot and Mary Elizabeth (Beers) 
Ingersoll, at Delta, Eaton County, 
Michigan, he received his early education 
in the public schools of his native town. 
In 1879, at the age of nineteen years, he 
came to New York City, and in the follow- 
ing year engaged in the business of manu- 
facturing rubber stamps; later, he estab- 
lished a mail order business, selling vari- 
ous "dollar" specialties and novelties. 
While engaged in this business he con- 
ceived the idea and in 1892 commenced 
the manufacture of the "dollar watch," 
since which time over 50,000,000 watches 
have been produced and sold by the Inger- 
soll organization. Married June 20, 
1904, to Roberta Marie Bannister of 
Green Bay, Wisconsin. Residence^ Oys- 
ter Bay, Long Island. 

Ingersoll, William Harrison — 
Marketing Manager of Robert H. Ingersoll 
& Bro., watch manufacturers. New York 
City. Born March 22, 1879, near Lan- 
sing, Michigan. He received a grammar 
and high school education and three 
years' technical training for electrical 
engineer. In 1901 he entered business 
in the retail sporting goods store of Robt. 
H. Ingersoll & Bro. in New York City 
and was soon placed in charge of the 
Ingersoll watch advertisings over which 
he exercised close supervision ever since, 
except for two periods prior to 1908, when 
he sought and gained valuable outside 
experience in other capacities, such as 
salesman and as manager of the Ingersoll 
watch business in Canada; he then be- 
came advertising manager, later sales and 
advertising manager and then general 
marketing manager for developing all 
markets of all countries of the world for 
the Ingersoll products. Active in the 
promotion of advertising research, Mr. 
Ingersoll was one of the founders of 
Truth in Advertising work, assisted in 
establishing a Fellowship in Advertising 
Research at Columbia University, New 
York City, and has written and lectured 
extensively on salesmanship, advertising, 
marketing and related subjects. His 
residence is at Maplewood, New Jersey. 

Ingold, Franz — A Swiss watchmaker 
who had the idea of making watch parts 
on the interchangeable plan long before 
it was put into practice anywhere. He was 
ill-received by labor and capital alike 



when he presented his plans in France, 
England, and America. In England he was 
nearly mobbed. In 1842-43 he obtained 
patents on some machinery in this hne, 
but the machines were clumsy and for the 
most part impracticable. There has been 
a tendency to credit Ingold as the source 
of Dennison's ideas on this subject, though 
Dennison says he never heard of Ingold 
until after he had started manufacturing. 

Intercalary — Introduced or added 
arbitrarily to a calendar; for example, the 
29th day of February is an intercalary 
day. 

Interchangeability — A m e r i c a ' s 
greatest contribution to watchmaking has 
been the standardizing of parts and the 
manufacturing of each of them, exactly 
alike, in great quantities. So that repairing 
an American watch is largely a matter of 
obtaining a new part similar to the dam- 
aged one, and simply putting it in place. 

Invar — An alloy of nickel and steel 
claimed to be non-magnetizable. Used for 
certain parts of watches at the time when 
non-magnetizable watches were desir- 
able. Invar is practically non-expansible 
when the nickel in it is about 37%. 

Isochronism — That property of a 
pendulum or balance spring by virtue of 
which its vibrations, of whatever length, 
are all made in exactly equal periods of 
time. 

Jacks; or Jack o'the Clock — Figures 
on the old turret clocks which auto- 
matically struck the hours. They pre- 
ceded dials tho were usually left 
when the dials were added. There are 
Jacks on the clock at St. Mary Steps, 
Exeter; Norwich Cathedral, South Aisle; 
and St. Dunstan's in Fleet St., among 
others. 

Jacquemarts — Figures of 
man and woman which 
struck the hours on the clock 
set up by Philip of Burgundy 
at Dijon, prior to 1370. 
G. Peignot says they are so 
named from Jacquemart, a 
clock maker of Lille, em- 
ployed by the Duke of 
Burgundy in 1442. The lack 
of co-ordination in the dates tends to 
controvert the claim. 

Jerome, Chauncey — Originator of the 




-42770* 



Appendix E 



one-day brass clock movement which 
enormously increased the American clock 
business and opened a market for Amer- 
ican clocks in Europe. Born in Canaan, 
Connecticut, in 1793. Established the 
Jerome Clock Company at New Haven, 
Connecticut. This was the predecessor 
of The New Haven Clock Company. 

Jewelled — Fitted with precious stones 
to diminish wear as distinguished from 
precious stones for ornament. In the best 
watches ruby and sapphire are used. In 
lower grade watches quartz, amethyst and 
garnet. 

Jewels — Used in watches as bushings 
at the ends of pivots and in other places 
which sustain much wear. They: 

1. Provide smooth bearings for the 
pivots. 

2. Obviate corrosion. 

3. Reduce the wear from abrasion. 
Sapphire is the best of the jewels in use 

and ruby second. Chrysolite is also used 
and garnet, tho the latter is too brittle 
for most service. This use of jewels was 
invented by Nicolas Facio — a Swiss 
watchmaker about 1705. 

Julian Period — A period of 7980 
years obtained by multiplying 28, 19 and 
15 — the numbers representing the cycles 
of the sun and moon, and the Roman In- 
diction. It will end 3267 A. D., until 
which time there cannot be two years 
having the same numbers for three cycles. 

Jura Mountains — A watchmaking 
center in Switzerland. The industry grew 
rapidly following the success of Daniel 
Jean Richard in 1679. This section is the 
center of the system of watch-manufac- 
turing most nearly like the American 
system. See Geneva. 

JuRGENSEN, JuLES — One of the most 
famous watchmakers of the 19th century; 
a son of Urban Jurgensen, born in 1808. 
He studied physics, mechanics and astron- 
omy in Paris and London and finally 
settled in Locle, Switzerland, specializing 
in pocket chronometers, which have be- 
come famous as the Jurgensen watches. 
He died in 1877; and was succeeded by his 
son, Jules F. U. Jurgensen. 

Jurgensen, Urban — A Danish mathe- 
matician and watchmaker born in 1776. 
He practiced his trade for a time in 
Switzerland, worked in Paris under Bre- 
guet and Berthoud, and then in London, 



Ijefore returning to Copenhagen to enter 
into partnership with his father, the court 
watchmaker. He was made superintendent 
of all the chronometers of the Danish 
navy and received several decorations. 
He died in 1830. 

KEW Observatory — ^The central me- 
teorological observatory of the 
United Kingdom. Established at Rich- 
mond in 1842 and afterward transferred 
to the Royal Society. Since 1900 it has 
been a department of the National Lab- 
oratory. Important to the watch business 
because of the famous Kew tests of time- 
keepers and awards for accuracy of per- 
formance. 

Keyless Watches — ^Watches winding 
without a key. Such watches were made 
as early as 1686 but did not come into 
general use until 1843, when Adrien 
PhiUipe (Geneva) introduced the "shift- 
ing clutch" type, and when the "rocking 
bar" mechanism was introduced in 1855. 
These are the types in use today. Self- 
winding watches have been made from 
time to time. Napoleon is said to have had 
one which wound automatically from the 
motion of being carried. The abandon- 
ment of the key nullified the usefulness of 
the fusee, although some keyless fusee 
movements were attempted. 

Knuckles — ^The rounded parts of a 
watchcase that form the hinges or joints. 
Usually two on the cover. 

La Chaux de Fonds — A watchmak- 
ing center in Switzerland which, in 
1840, with a population of 9678, had 3109 
watchmakers. At present it is the leading 
exporter of gold watches in Switzerland. 
In this section the system of manufactur- 
ing is much like the American system. 

Laminated — Made up of tin sheets of 
beaten, rolled or pressed metal. In the 
compensation balance — the sheets are of 
brass and steel, or brass and aluminum. 

Lancaster, Pa. — ^A town where there 
have been watch factories for upwards of 
fifty years. 

Lange, Adolph — An eminent Dresden 
watchmaker born there in 1815, famous 
for his astronomical clocks, chronometers, 
and fine watches. Under the direction and 
with the assistance of his government he 



-&278B- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



established the extensive watchmaking 
industry of Glashutte. He died in 1875. 

Lantern Pinion — A pinion consisting 
of two circular metal end plates usually 
of brass joined by short steel wires which 
act as cogs in a gear. 

Latitude — 1. In astronomy, the ang- 
ular elevation of a heavenly body above 
the ecliptic. 2. In geography a distance 
measured in degrees, minutes and seconds 
north or south from the equator. 3. In dial 
work, the elevation of the pole of the 
heavens; the angle at which the plane of 
the horizon is cut by the earth's axis. 

Lead — The continuous action of a 
wheel tooth which impels the leaf of a 
pinion or the pallet of a balance. 

Leap-Year — See Calendar, Gregorian. 

Leaves — ^The name applied to the teeth 
of a pinion wheel. 

Lepaute, J. A.— 1709-1789. A French 
clockmaker famous for his turret clocks; 
the inventor of the pin-wheel escapement 
and an authoritative writer on horological 
subjects. He wrote "Traite d'Horlogerie" 
which was afterward revised and added 
to by Lalaude. 

Lepire, Jean Antoine — Born 1720. 
Died 1814. A celebrated watchmaker of 
Paris in the 18th century. About 1770 he 
introduced bars to take the' place of a top 
plate, omitted the fusee, used a cylinder 
escapement and supported his mainspring 
barrel arbor at one end only. He attempt- 
ed to establish a watch factory for Vol- 
taire at Ferney but with no success. He is 
sometimes credited with making the first 
thin watch. 

Le Roy, Julien— 1686-1759. A French 
scientist and watchmaker. He invented 
the horizontal movement for turret clocks, 
a form of repeating mechanism. He con- 
structed the first compensation balance. 

Le Roy, Pierre— 1717-1785. Son of 
Julien Le Roy. Esteemed the greatest of 
all French horologists. He invented a form 
of duplex escapement and an escapement 
which formed the basis for the present 
chronometer escapement. 

Lever — ^That part of a lever escape- 
ment to which are attached the pallet 
arms, and which thus transmits motion 
from the escape wheel to the balance. 

Lift, or Lifting Arc — ^That portion of 



the oscillation of a balance during which 
it received its impulse. The remainder of 
the turn is called the supplementary arc. 

Lightfoot, Peter — A Glastonbury 
monk, maker of the Glastonbury and 
Wimburne clocks, 1335. 

Lips — In a cylinder escapement, the 
rounded edges of the cylinder through 
which the escape wheel gives impulse to 
the balance 

Locking — 1. The stopping of the escape 
wheel of a watch or clock. 2. The portion 
of the pallet on which the teeth of the 
escape wheel drop. 3. The depth to which 
the escape tooth laps upon the pallet at 
the moment it leaves the impulse face. 

Logan, John — Born in Lowell, Mass., 
1844. Invented a new method of temper- 
ing springs and made superior main and 
balance springs. He was connected for 
several years with the Waltham Watch 
Company, during which time he invented 
many labor-saving machines. Died 1893. 

Longitude — The circular distance east 
or west subtending the angle which two 
meridional planes make at the axis of the 
earth, one of them being a standard refer- 
ence meridian. 

LoNGiNES — A watch factory at St. 
Imier in the Jura Mountains, near La 
Chaux de Fonds, established in 1874. 
Here all parts are made under one roof 
and the work is done by machinery. 

Lower Plate — The plate in a watch 
nearest the dial. Also called the "dial 
plate." It carries the lower pivots of the 
movement. 

Luitprand — ^A monk of Chartres who 
revived the art of glass-blowing at the 
end of the 8th century. To him is some- 
times ascribed the invention of the sand- 
glass. 

Luminous Dial — A watch dial whose 
hands and figures are so treated as to be 
visible in the dark. Formerly accomplish- 
ed by a phosphorescent paint which re- 
quired frequent exposure to sunlight to be 
effective and retained its luminosity only 
an hour or two. Now effected by means of 
a compound absolutely independent of 

^^^^^ the sunlight and of a lasting 
'' "^ glow. See Radiolite. 

Lunette — ^The usual form 
of rounded watch crystaL 



-&279S* 



Appendix E 



MAINSPRING — The long steel ribbon 
used for driving a clock or watch. 
The spring is coiled into a circular metal 
box called the barrel and the outer end of 
the spring is fastened to the barrel; the 
inner end to the arbor of the great wheel. 
First applied, replacing weights, by Peter 
Henlein of Nuremberg, about 1500. 

Maintaining Power — The device for 
driving the train while a watch or clock is 
being wound. 

Marsh, E. A. — An important figure in 
watch manufacturing in America for a 
number of years. Born at Sunderland, 
Conn., in 1837, in 1863 he entered the em- 
ploy of the Waltham Watch Company 
and rose to the position of General Super- 
intendent. In 1908 he retired from active 
service but retains his connection with the 
company as consulting superintendent. 
Besides his practical services to the watch- 
making industry Mr. Marsh wrote "The 
Evolution of Automat Machinery," in 
1896. 

Massey, Edward — An English watch- 
maker of the early nineteenth century. 
He invented the "crank roller" escape- 
ment, a kind of keyless winding for 
watches, and many other watch parts. 

Mean Solar Day — The average length 
of all the solar days in a year. This period 
is divided into 24 parts, or hours. 

Mean Time — Clocks, watches, etc., 
are made to measure equal units of time 
instead of the apparent time indicated 
by the sun. Mean time and true solar time 
agree only four times in a year. See 
Equation of Time. 

Mercer's Balance — A balance of the 
ordinary kmd fitted with an auxiliary — 
a laminated arm of brass and steel fixed 
at one end to the central bar of the balance 
and on its free end carrying two adjust- 
able screws. This auxiliary may be ar- 
ranged for either extreme of temperature 
with great accuracy. 

Meridian Dial — A dial 
for determining when the sun 
is on the meridian. It is very 
simply constructed. For di- 
rections see "Watch and 
Clockmakers' Handbook," by F, J. 
Britten. 

Meridian Watch — ^A watch which 
shows the time in a number of places in 
different parts of the world. It is set to 





Greenwich time and marks the difFerence 
between this and the time of all the great 
metropolitan cities in both hemispheres. 

Metronome — An in- 
strument for indicating 
and marking exact time 
music. It consists of a 
counterbalanced, or re- 
versed, pendulum, which 
may be regulated to 
swing at any desired 
number of vibrations per 
minute. 

Middle Temperature Error — ^The 
compensation balance does not exactly 
meet the temperature error. The rim ex- 
pands too much with decrease of tempera- 
ture and contracts too little with the in- 
crease. Hence a watch or chronometer can 
be correctly adjusted for two points only. 
The unavoidable error between is the 
middle temperature error. 

Minute — The sixtieth part of a mean 
solar hour. 

Minute Hand — ^The hand on a clock or 
watch which indicates the minutes. In the 
earher days clocks had no minute hand. 
It was first concentered with the hour 
hand in 1673. 

Minute Wheel — The wheel which 
carries the minute hand and is driven by 
the cannon pinion. 

Minute Wheel Pin or Stud — ^The 
stud fixed to the plate on which the minute 
wheel pinion turns. 

Minute Wheel Pinion or "Nut" — ■ 
The pinion in watches on which the min- 
ute wheel is mounted and which drives 
the hour wheel. 

Moment of Inertia — The resistance 
of a body in motion (or at rest) to a 
change in the velocity or direction of its 
motion. In a rotating body the sum of the 
products formed by multiplying the mass 
of each particle by the square of its dis- 
tance from an axis. 

Month — An arbitrary division of the 
year, varying in the number of days it 
contains, according to the calendar in 
use. See Calendar. 

Mortise — A slot or hole into which a 
tenon of corresponding shape is to be 
fitted. 

Moseley, C. S. — ^A pioneer In the field 



*§280S* 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



of designing and building automatic 
watchmaking machinery. He invented 
some of the most delicate and complicated 
tools and mechanisms used in watch man- 
ufacture. He was early connected with the 
Waltham Co., master mechanic for the 
Nashua Co., during its brief history; and 
later general superintendent of the Elgin 
National Watch Company. 

Motion — The wheels that carry the 
hands: cannon pinion, horn wheel and 
minute wheel and pinion. 

Motion Work — ^The wheels in a watch 
which make the motion of the hour hand 
one twelfth as rapid as that of the minute 
hand. 

Movement — ^The watch or clock com- 
plete, without dial or case — the mechan- 
ism of the watch or clock. 

MuDGE, Thomas — ^An English watch- 
maker of the 18th century. Born at 
Exeter in 1716, died 1794. In 1793 he re- 
ceived from Parliament three thousand 
pounds as a recompense for his improve- 
ments in chronometers. His work was 
celebrated for its excellence. 

NAME Bar — ^The bar which carries the 
upper end of the arbor of a watch 
barrel. 

Naval Observatory — ^The United 
States Naval Observatory at Washington, 
D. C. There is there a superlatively ac- 
curate clock from which the time is 
flashed electrically to all parts of the 
United States. 

Neuchatel — ^A town in the Jura 
Mountains' watch manufacturing district 
of Switzerland. A Cantonal Observatory 
at Neuchatel helps establish the reputa- 
tion for the accuracy of Swiss watches. 
Non-Magnetic Watch — ^A watch in 
which the quick - moving 
parts — lever, pallets, balance 
spring, etc., are made of some 
other metal besides steel — as 
aluminum bronze, invar, etc. 

Nuremberg — A German 
city where Peter Henlein 
made the first watch. It was 
one of the chief clock centers 
of the 16th and 17th cen- 
turies and with Augsburg and 

Ulm supplied the markets of 

Europe with the first small clocks. 




Nuremberg Eggs — ^Watches made in 
Nuremberg in the shape of eggs. If not the 
first watches at least very early examples. 

OBELISK — A square shaft with a 
pyramidal top. The ancient Egyp- 
tian obelisks are thought to have served as 
gnomons. 

Ogive — A pointed arch — 
of the architectural type 
known as Gothic. 

Oil Sink — ^The cavity 
around the pivot hole in 
watch and clock plates, 
designed to hold a small particle of oil in 
contact with the pivot. 

Ormolu — Gilt or bronzed metallic 
ware, or a fine bronze which has the ap- 
pearance of being gilded. Used for orna- 
menting the cases of fine old clocks. 

Orologe — An obsolete form of horo- 
loge. See Horologe. 

Orologiers — An obsolete form of horo- 
logers, a term not now in use but signify- 
ing men who constructed time-pieces. 





Orrery — ^A planetarium; an instru- 
ment showing the relative motions, posi- 
tions and masses of the sun and planets. It 
was so named from Lord Orrery, for 
whom the first modern planetarium was 
made in England. 

Oscillation — ^The movement back and 
forward of a pendulum or the swing of a 
balance spring. The vibration. 

Overbanking — Pushing of the ruby 
pin past the lever, caused by excessive 
vibration of the balance. In a cylinder 
escapement the turning back of the 
cylinder until an escape wheel tooth 
catches and holds it. In a chronometer 
escapement the second unlocking of the 
escape wheel from the same cause. 

Overcoil — ^The outermost coil of a 
Breguet spring which is bent back across 
the coil toward the center. 



-§281 S-. 



Appendix E 



PACIFICUS — Archdeacon of Verona, 
died about 850A.D. Itis claimed by 
some that he made a clock furnished with 
an escapement. (Bailly.) But this is not 
proved, and others believe it to have been 
merely a water-clock. 

Pad — ^The pallet of the anchor escape- 
ment for clocks. 

Pair Case — At one time watches were 
made with two or even three separate 
cases. The outer one of shagreen tortoise 
shell, or some other ornamental material 
was sometimes for the protection of the 
delicate enamel on the inner case. Some- 
times as in the case of repeaters the inner 
case was pierced to emit the sound. Then 
the outer one served as dust protection 
to the works. 

Palladium — A soft metal formerly 
used in alloy with copper and silver for 
the balance and balance spring of non- 
magnetizable watches. Too soft to be as 
serviceable as steel, it has been super- 
seded by a platinum alloy. 

Pallet — Has different meanings, even 
among watchmakers. Generally, the part 
through which the escape wheel gives 
impulse to the balance or pendulum. 

Pallet Staff — The arbor on which the 
pallet is mounted, and on which it turns. 

Pallet Stone — ^The jewel on the con- 
tact face of the pallet, where it is struck 
by the teeth of the escape wheel. 

Parallax — ^The apparent angular dis- 
placement of a heavenly body due to a 
change of the observer's position. 

Pedometer — An instrument which 
registers the number of paces walked — 
hence if properly adjusted to the length 
of step of the wearer it gives the distance 
traversed. 

Pendant — ^The small neck and knob 
of metal connecting the bow of a watch 
case with the band of the case. 

Pendulum — A body suspended by a 
rod or cord and free to swing to and fro; 
used in clocks to regulate the velocity 
with which the driving power moves the 
wheels and hence the hands. The isoch- 
ronism of a pendulum vibrating in a 
cycloidal arc was first discovered by 
Galileo but he did not apply it to clocks. 
Most authorities credit Christian Huygh- 
ens with that adaptation to instruments 



for keeping time. The pendulum was first 
suspended by a silk cord and thus vi- 
brated in a circular instead of cycloidal 
arc. "Huyghens' Checks" were an un- 
successful attempt to remedy this. Dr. 
Hooke succeeded in remedying it by 
suspending the pendulum by a flat ribbon 
of spring steel. 

Pendulum, Gridiron — Invent- 
ed by Harrison in 1726, and still 
with slight improvements an ef- 
fective timekeeper. The rod of this 
pendulum is constructed of five 
steel and four brass rods so ar- 
ranged that those which expand 
most are counteracted by those of 
less expansion, and the length of 
the pendulum remains constant. 

Pendulum, Mercurial Com- 

PENSATioN — A pendulum having 

'for a bob a jar of mercury which 

expands upward with the increase 

of temperature thus counteracting 

the lengthening of the rod from 

the same cause. Invented by Graham 

about 1720. With slight improvements 

still in use and keeps time very accurately. 

-^ Pendulum, Torsion — A 

"j~ pendulum vibrating by the 
/ alternate twisting and untwist- 

/ ing of an elastic suspension. 

' The body is a horizontal disc 

weighted around its edges, and 
its suspension a Steel or brass 
wire. The period of a torsion 
pendulum being much longer 
than a vibrating pendulum of 
the same length, the time of running is 
longer. Clocks fitted with torsion pend- 
ulums have run a year on one winding. 

Pendulum Swing — The short ribbon 
of spring steel which suspends the pendu- 
lum of a clock. 

Penetration of Gearing — ^The depth 
of intermeshing of the teeth of pinion and 
wheel. 

Phillips Spring — ^A balance spring 
with terminal curves after rules laid down 
by M. Phillips, an eminent French math- 
ematician. A term seldom used though 
his curves are generally followed. 

Pillar — The three or 
four short brass posts 
which keep the plates at 
their proper distance apart. In early 




-§282^ 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



d^s made in very artistic and elaborate 
shapes. Later they became plain straight 
cylindrical columns. 

Pillar Model — A type of movement 
in Vvhich the works are hung between two 
plates supported and separated by posts 
or pillars and forming all the principal 
bearings of the movement. Only average 
adjustment is possible in this model. In 
this model the plate is sometimes cut away 
to imitate a "bridge model." The opposite 
extreme in construction to the "bridge 
model." 

Pillar Plate — ^The lower plate of a 
watch movement — the one nearest the 
dial — to which the pillars are solidly 
fixed, in a "pillar model." 

Pinchbeck, or "Pinchbeck Gold" — • 
An alloy of three parts zinc to four of 
copper which "resembles gold in color, 
smell and ductility." So called from its 
inventor Christopher Pinchbeck (1670- 
1732) who during his life guarded the 
secret of its composition very jealously. 

Pinion — ^The smaller of two toothed 
wheels that work together. The teeth of 
a pinion are called leaves. See also Lan- 
tern Pinion. 

Pinion, Lantern — A pinion 
consisting of two circular metal 
plates joined by short steel 
wires. 

Pitch — ^The length of the 
arc of the circumference of the 
pitch circle from center to center 
of two adjacent teeth. 

Pitch Circle — ^The geometrical circle 
traced with the center of the wheel as 
its center and at which the curved tips of 
the teeth begin. The diameter is propor- 
tional to the number of teeth determined 
upon. The proportion of the pitch circles 
of a wheel and a pinion gearing together 
is determined by the ratio of revolutions 
desired. 

Pitkin, Henry — ^With his brother, 
James F., he started at Hartford, Conn., 
in 1838, the first factory for machine- 
made watches in the United States. They 
made their own machinery, which was 
very crude. After making about 800 
watches they were forced to abandon the 
project, being unable to compete with 
cheap foreign watches. He died in 1845. 




Pivots — The ends of the rotating ar- 
bors in a watch that run in bearings. 

Planetarium — An astronomical clock 
which exhibits the relative motions and 
positions of the members of the solar 
system. Has no regulating system and 
usually no driving power but is run by 
turning a crank by hand. 

Plates — In watches and small clocks 
the circular discs of brass to which the 
mechanism of the watch is supported. In 
large clocks the plates are usually square- 
cornered oblong. See Pillar Plate, Top 
Plate, Half Plate, Full Plate, etc. In. 
half-plate, and three-quarter-plate types 
of watches part of the disc is cut away. 

Pocket Chronometer — ^A watch with 
a chronometer escapement. 

Polos — A basin in the center of which 
the perpendicular staff or gnomon was 
erected, and marked by lines for the 
twelve portions of the sun-lit day. Herod- 
otus ascribes its invention to the Baby- 
lonians, Phavoriums claims it for Anax- 
imander and Pliny for Anaximenes. Also 
called "Heliotropion." 

Potance or Potence — A vertical or 
hang down bracket, supporting the lower 
end of the balance staff in full-plate 
watches. 

Prescot — A town in a remote part of 
Lancashire for years the center of the 
movement trade in England. 

Push Piece — 1. The milled knob 
pushed in from the pendant to open the 
case. 2. The boss pushed in when the 
watch is to be set. 

QUARE, Daniel — 1649-1724 — Claimed 
theinventionofthe repeater, and back- 
ed by the Clockmakers'Company obtained 
the patent against Barlow from James II. 
Also credited with the invention of equa- 
tion clocks. He was master of the Clock- 
makers' Company in 1708. He first used 
the concentred minute hand in England, 
but Huyghens had preceded him in this 
in the Netherlands. 

Quarter — 1. A term in common use 
for the period of three months — a quarter 
of the year. 2. The fourth part of an hour 
— 15 minutes. 

Quick Train — A watch movement 
balance vibrates 18,000 times per hour. 



-^2835* 



Appendix E 



Unequal mainspring pull is less felt in the 
quick train. Used generally in Switzer- 
land and America, and a feature of prac- 
tically all modern watches. 

RACK — ^A straight bar, or segment of a 
circle, with teeth along one edge. It 
has a reciprocating motion. 

"Radiolite" — ^Trade name adopted 
by Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro. for their 
watches having black faced dials with 
luminous hands and numerals. Composed 
of a substance in which genuine radium 
is used in minute proportions. 

Radius of Gyration — ^The distance 
from the center of gyration to the axis of 
rotation. 

Ramsey, Davis — One of the earliest 
British watchmakers of renown. He was 
appointed "keeper of clocks and watches" 
to James I, and appears to have retained 
his appointments after the death of the 
latter. He was the first master of the 
Clockmakers' Company tho he seems 
to have taken little active part in the 
management thereof. Scott introduces 
him into his story — "The Fortunes of 
Nigel" as a Keeper of a shop a few yards 
east of Temple Bar. Without doubt he 
was the leading clockmaker of his day. He 
died in 1655. 

Ratchet — ^The pawl, or dog, which en- 
gages in the teeth of a ratchet wheel and 
prevents it from turning backward. It is 
held lightly against the periphery of the 
ratchet wheel by a small spring known as 
the ratchet spring. 

Ratchet Wheel — A wheel 
with triangular teeth fixed on 
to an arbor to prevent the 
latter from turning backward. 
The fronts of the teeth are 
radial, the backs straight 
lines running from the tip of one tooth to 
the base of the next. In going-barrel, 
keyless watches the ratchet has epicy- 
cloidal teeth. By "the ratchet" in a watch, 
chronometer or clock with mainspring is 
meant the ratchet fastened to the barrel 
arbor to prevent the mainspring from 
slipping back when it is being wound. 

Recoil — In recoil escapements the 
pallets not only stop the escape wheel but 
actually turn it backward a slight dis- 




tance. This liackward motion is called the 
recoil. 

Regulator — 1. A standard clock with 
compensated pendulum with which less 
accurate movements are compared, "^i,- 
The lever in a watch by which the curb- 
pins regulating the swing of the hairspring 
are shifted. 

Remontoire — An arrangement in the 
upper part of the going train by which a 
weak spring is wound up or a small weight 
is Ufted that gives impulse to the escape 
wheel at short intervals. Its use is to 
counteract the irregularities in impulse 
due to the coarse train, etc. They are 
delicate and complicated and now super- 
seded by the Double Three-legged Grav- 
ity Escapement. 

Repeater — ^A striking watch or clock 
which by the pulling of a string or the 
pressing of a button could be made to 
repeat the last hour and part hour, struck. 
In vogue during the 18th century. Credit 
for the invention was disputed by Daniel 
Quare and Edward Barlow. James II gave 
the decision in favor of Quare whose 
mechanism was a trifle simpler. 

Repousse — ^A kind of chasing in which 
the metal is punched or pressed from the 
back bringing the design into higher relief 
than by the usual method of indenting. 

Ring-Dial — See Sun- 
dial, Portable. 

Richard, Daniel Jean — 
A Swiss watchmaker, born 
at La Sagne in 1665. At fif- 
teen a watch having come 
into his hands, he constructed a similar 
one unaided. That was the first watch 
made in Neuchatel. After a time in 
Geneva he set up business in La Sagne, 
afterwards moving to Locle. He created 
the watch industry of Neuchatel and saw 
it grow to a neighborhood of five hundred 
workers. He died at Locle 1741. In 1888 a 
bronze statue was erected to him there. 

RoBBiNS, Royal E. — Born in Connecti- 
cut 1824. He was essentially one of the 
"fathers" of American watchmaking be- 
cause it was through his financing and 
clever management that the first watch 
company finally succeeded in making a 
financial success. 

Roller — ^The circular plate in a lever 
escapement, into which the ruby pin is set. 




*&284e- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



Roller-Jewel — Same as "impulse 
pin." 

Roman Indiction — A period of fifteen 
years appointed by the Emperor Con- 
stantine 312 A. D. for the payment of 
certain taxes. 

Rose Engine — ^A lathe in which the 
rotary movement of the mandrel is com- 
bined with a lateral, reciprocating move- 
ment of the tool rest; used for ornament- 
ing the outside cases of watches with 
involved curved engraving. 

Ruby Pin — The impulse pin in a lever 
escapement, made of a ruby 

Ruby Roller — The roller in a duplex 
escapement against which the teeth of the 
escape wheel are locked. 

Run — In the lever escapement, the 
extent of the movement of the lever to- 
ward the banking pins after the "drop" 
on to the locking. 

SABiNiANUS — Pope from 604 to 606. 
Said to have invented a clock in 612 A. 
D., but the clock heis supposed to have 
built was probably only another of many 
forms of clepsydrae, or water clocks. 

Safety Pinion — A center pinion in a 
going-barrel watch which allows the recoil 
of the barrel if the mainspring breaks. 

Sand-Glass— (Clepsammia) — 
A dumb-bell-shaped glass globe 
containing sand, and with a 
small aperture through which 
the sand flows in a certain fixed 
time. The most common form 
is the hour-glass but many 
others are in use as the three- 
minute glass for boiling eggs, 
the two-minute glass used by 
the British Parliament, etc. Dried and 
finely powdered eggshell sometimes used 
in place of sand. The principle is the 
same as that of the simplest form of 
clepsydra. See Hour-Glass. 

Sandoz and Trot — A firm which 
established the first watch factory in 
Switzerland in 1804. Previous to that 
time watchmaking had been a house 
industry. 

Second — One-sixtieth of a minute: 
1-3600 of a mean solar hour. 

Secondary Compensation — Same as 
"auxiliary compensation." See Auxiliary. 




Seconds Hand — ^The hand on the dial 
of a clock or watch which revolves once a 
minute. Sometimes small and set in a 
small circle of its own. Sometimes long 
and traverses the whole dial. See Center- 
seconds and Sweep-seconds. 

Seconds Pivot — The prolongation of 
the fourth wheel arbor to which the sec- 
onds hand of a watch is fixed. 

Seconds, Split — Divided seconds — in- 
to quarters, or fifths; measured by a 
chronograph 

Shadow — ^A darkened space resulting 
from the interception of light by an 
opaque body. 

Shagreen — Made from the tough skin 
that covers the crupper of a horse or ass. 
Rough seeds are trodden into the skin and 
then allowed to dry. The seeds are shaken 
out and the skin dyed green. Then the 
rough surface is rubbed down smooth 
leaving white spots on the green ground. 
Also made from the rough skin of sharks 
and dolphins. Formerly used a great deal 
for the outer cases of watches. See Pair 
Cases. 

Sherwood, Napoleon Bonaparte — 
Born in 1823. About 1855 he entered the 
watchmaking business in the employ of 
the Waltham Watch Co. He revolution- 
ized jeweling methods and invented 
among other things a "Counter-sinker," 
"End-shake tools," "Truing-up tools" and 
"Opener." In 1864 he organized the New- 
ark Watch Company but within a few 
months severed his connection with it. 
He died in 1872. 

Sidereal Time — ^The standard used by 
astronomers; measured by the diurnal 
rotation of the earth, which turns on its 
axis in 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds. 
The sidereal day is therefore 3 minutes, 
56 seconds shorter than the mean solar 
day. Mean time clocks can be regulated 
with greater facility by the stars than by 
the sun for the motion of the earth with 
regard to the fixed stars is uniform. 
Clocks all over the United States are so 
regulated from the Naval Observatory at 
Washington. 

Side-Shake — Freedom of pivots to 
move sideways. See End-Shake. 

Slow Train — A train whose balance 
vibrates 14,400 times an hour. Now never 
used in pocket watches because of sus- 



*&285S- 



Appendix E 



ceptibllity to inequalities in the pull of 
the mainspring, jars, sudden movements, 
etc. Used, however, in marine chronom- 
eters. 

Snail — A cam shaped like a snail, used 
generally for gradually lifting and sud- 
denly discharging a lever, as in the strike 
ing mechanism of clocks. 

Snailing — A method of ornamenting 
with circles and bars parts of a watch 
movement which it is not desirable to 
polish highly. 

Solar Time — ^Time marked by the di- 
urnal revolution of the earth with regard 
to the sun, of which the midday is the 
instant at which the sun appears at its 
greatest height above the horizon. This 
instant varies from twelve o'clock mean 
time because the earth also advances in 
its orbit and its meridians are not per- 
pendicular to the ecliptic 

Spandrels — ^The 
corners of a square 
face outside the dial 
of a clock. Form- 
erly very beauti- 
fully decorated. The 
age of the clock can 
be told approxi- 
mately from the 
form of ornamenta- 
tion employed. 

Split Seconds — ^A chronograph in 
which there are two center-seconds hands 
— one under the other — which can be 
stopped independently of one another. 

Spring-Clocks — Clocks whose driving 
power is a coiled spring instead of a 
weight. 

Stackfreed — ^The deriva- 
tion of the word is obscure; it 
is possibly Persian. A device 
to counteract the difference 
in power of the mainspring at 
the different stages of its unwinding. 
Fixed to the mainspring arbor above the 
top plate is a pinion having eight leaves, 
which gears with a wheel having twenty- 
four teeth, which do not quite fill out the 
circumference of the wheel. Fastened to 
the wheel is a cam, concentric for about 
seven-eighths of its circumference and 
indented for the remainder. Into a groove 
in the concentric portion of the edge is 
pressed a roller which is pivoted at the 





free end of a strong curved spring. When 
the mainspring is fully wound the roller 
rests in the curved depression of the cam 
and the effort required to lift the roller 
up the incline absorbs some of the main- 
spring's power. On the other hand when 
the mainspring is nearly run down, the 
roller is descending an inclined plane 
and absorbs less of the power. Not an 
acceptable device and now rarely met 
with. 

Stem-Winding — ^The ordinary method 
of winding keyless watches by means of a 
stem running through the pendant. 

Stop Work — ^An arrangement for pre- 
venting the overwinding of a mainspring 
or a clock weight. 

Stratton, N. p. — One of the early 
watchmakers connected with American 
manufacture. He was an apprentice of the 
Pitkin Bros., and was sent by the 
Waltham Company to England in 1852 
to learn gilding and etching. He was made 
assistant superintendent of the Waltham 
Co. in 1857. He invented a mainspring 
barrel and a hair-spring stud which were 
later adopted by the Waltham Company. 

Striking-Work — The part of a clock's 
mechanism devoted to striking. The chief 
forms are Rack, and Locking-plate, or 
Count-wheel. See separate articles. 

Striking-Work, Locking-Plate, or 
Count-Wheel — Used in turret clocks 
where there is no occasion for the repeat- 
ing movement. This form of striking work 
does not allow of the repetition or omis- 
sion of the striking of any hour without 
making the next one wrong. 

Striking-Work — Rack — A form of 
striking work used largely in house 
clocks; the number of blows to be struck 
depends merely on the position of a wheel 
attached to the going part. In this form 
the striking of any horn may be omitted 
or repeated without deranging the fol- 
lowing strikes. 

Stud — 1. A small piece of metal pierced 
to receive the outer or upper coil of a 
balance spring. 2. The holder of the fusee 
stop-work. 3. Any fixed holder used in a 
watch or clock, not otherwise named, is 
called a stud. 

Style — The finger or gnomon on a sun- 
dial whose shadow, falling on the plate, 
indicates the time. 



-e286s- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



Sully, Henry — ^An English watch- 
maker of the early eighteenth century 
who lived most of "his life in France. He 
presented the French Academy with a 
marine timekeeper superior to the time- 
pieces of the period, and a memoir de- 
scribing it. He died shortly afterward and 
advance in the art was delayed. 

SuN-DiAL — A device for telling time by 
the shadow of a style, cast by the sun, as 
thrown upon a disk or plate marked with 
the hour Imes. Dials were named from 
their positions — equinoctial or equatorial; 
east; erect or vertical; horizontal; inclin- 
ing, etc., or from their purpose or method 
of use, as portable, reflecting, etc., or as 
in th.e case of the ring-dial, from their form. 
The word is derived from the Latin dies. 
Thp style in the earliest dials was a ver- 
tical staff, but later it was found that 
reasonable accuracy could only be ob- 
tained by a style set parallel to the earth's 
axis — that is, inclined to the horizontal 
at the angle of latitude of the locality in 
which the dial was set. 

Even before the first astronomical dis- 
coveries of the Babylonians, people had 
felt some need of a convenient device to 
mark and measure the passing of the time, 
especially the shorter divisions of recur- 
ring time, the time of day. Sunrise and 
sunset marked themselves by the horizon, 
but noon was harder to determine, and the 
pomts of mid-morning and mid-afternoon 
harder still. And with the knowledge of 
those regular movements in the heavens 
which determine time on earth, and with 
the closer divisionof the day into its hours, 
that need became a sheer necessity. 

The obvious measure of the sun's move- 
ments was the moving shadow cast by the 
sun itself. And the earliest device for 
recording time was naturally the sun-dial. 
Its origin fades into the twilight of an- 
tiquity. Long before we know anything 
about him, primitive man measured the 
moving shadow of some tree. And it oc- 
curred to him to set up a post or pillar in 
some convenient place, and mark out the 
positions into which the shadow swung. 
The earliest sun-dials were of this pattern, 
with a vertical pointer o^ gnomo7i, and the 
hours marked upon the ground. And it is 
related of the early Greeks that they told 
the time individually by marking and 
measuring the length of their own shad- 
ows. But the measure of time by the 



length of a shadow is very irregular at 
best, because of the yearly motion of the 
sun. The shortest shadow of the day will 
indeed fall at noon. But that noon shadow 
will vary in length according as the sun's 
noon is high in Summer or low in Winter; 
and so the whole scale of lengths will be 
different for every day in the j^ear. If a 
three foot shadow means mid-afternoon 
today, it will mean quite another time 
tomorrow. And for measuring by the 
direction of the shadow, the vertical 
gnomon is more irregular still. For the 
swing of the shadow would depend not 
only upon the sun's motion across the sky 
from East to West, but also upon his 
slant North and South along the sky. 
And this would change from day to day. 
The difl&culty was to make a dial of which 
the shadow would move as regularly as 
the sun moves. 

This the ancients accomplished in a 
very simple and ingenious way. The sun 
moves in the sky as it were upon the inner 
surface of a hollow globe or sphere. So 
they made the dial a little hemisphere, 
place with its hollow side up toward the 
asky as a bowl 
[stands on a 
it a b 1 e. The 
[pointer was 
placed above 
and to the 
South of this, 
onthesidetow- 
ard the sun; 
and the Time 
was marked 

ANCIE.NT GKEE. EEMICTCLE ^y the shadoW 

of the rip end of the pointer which was 
a little ball or bead. The path of this 
shadow across the bowl reproduced ex- 
actly on a small scale the path of the sun 
across the great bowl of the heavens. 
And It was then an easy matter to mark 
off the bowl into equal divisions which the 
shadow would cross at equal intervals of 
the day. Of course, the track of the shadow 
changed with the season of the year. But 
it moved always as the sun moved, and 
just as regular^, giving a true measure 
of the solar day. 

The principle of this was applied in 
several interesting variations. The defect 
of the Hemicycle, as this hollow type of 
dial was called, was that it could not be 
read accurately for short intervals. A 




-&287B- 



Appendix E 




shadow moving only a few inches in the 
whole day must 
move so slowly that 
one could hardly see 
it move at all. To 
mark the minutes, 
it must move faster, 
just as the minute 
hand of your watch 
moves faster than 
the hour hand, and 
the second hand 
faster still. One can- 
not read seconds 
from the hour hand, 
however accurately it moves, because it 
moves so slowly. So the idea was applied 
by making the shadow move across a 
street or courtyard, down one side and 
across and up the other side, as the sun 
opposite went up and across and down 
the sky. Sometimes the place was partly 
roofed over, and a single beam of light 
admitted through a small hole at the 
South end. The resulting spot of light 
would then move in the same way. The 
long sunbeam or shadow moved faster, 
and so could be read at shorter intervals. 
The Hemicycle is not certainly known to 
have been invented until long after this, 
about B. C. 350. But the principle of it is 
so simple and so entirely such as would 
occur to an intelligent man still ignorant 
of its mathematical explanation, that we 
may not unreasonably suppose it to have 
been discovered by experiments long 
before. 

The final improvement of the sundial 
was the discovery that by slanting the 
gnomon so that it pointed exactly toward 
the North Pole of the sky, the direction 
of its shadow could be made to show the 
solar time correctly. Since the sky is in- 
finitely far away, the line of the gnomon 
would then lie parallel to the axis of the 
heavens. And the sun, moving parallel to 
the celestial Equator, would always move 
straight across the gnomon. In other 
words, he would practically revolve 
around its sloping edge. Therefore the 
North and South motion of the sun would 
be as it were along the edge of the gnomon, 
and would not influence the direction of 
the shadow at all. His East and West 
motion alone would govern the swing of 
the shadow; and the dial would keep true 
time with the sun for every day in the 



year. There was no longer any necessity 
for hollowing out the dial itself into the 
concave form; it might just as well be the 
more convenient flat surface, and this 
might be either vertical or horizontal, 
so long as the gnomon pointed straight to 
the Celestial Pole. All that was needed 
was to mark out on the dial the true di- 
rection in which the shadow fell for each 
hour of the day. 

Just when or by whom the instrument 
was thus scientifically perfected is not 
known. The calculations necessary to the 
projection of the hour lines upon a flat 
surface could hardly have been per- 
formed before Greek times. The Greeks 
ascribed the invention of the sundial to 
Anaximander, in the sixth century B. C, 
but sundials of various types had been 
known m various parts of the world long 
before then. On the other hand, the 
Hemicycle remained the common form 
of the instrument all through the classic 
period and even afterwards. The Baby- 
lonians were quite capable of understand- 
ing the principle of the sloping gnomon. 
And once this was discovered, it would 
have been entirely practical to set up the 
new dial beside a Hemicycle or Clepsydra, 
and find the angles of the hour lines by 
experiment. These, once laid out correctly, 
would be determined once for all. Even 
at its best the sundial had certain very 
marked limitations. Scientifically con- 
structed, it would keep accurate time 
according to the visible sun. But it could 
not be read accurately unless made in- 
conveniently large. It was inaccurate 
when removed from its original latitude, 
or displaced from a true North and South 
position; so that in any portable form it 
became a very rough measure indeed. 
Moreover, it was of course entirely useless 
at night or in bad weather or in shadow. 
And finally, it was never ab- 
solutely exact under the most 
ideal conditions, because of 
what is known as the Equa- 
tion of Time. The Earth does 
not, in fact, move around the 
sun at an absolutely regular 
rate of speed; it moves a trifle 
oLDENGLisH fastet during certain parts of 
^^^ the year and slower at others. 
The sun therefore varies correspondingly 
his apparent speed along the Ecliptic, so 
that even from noon to noon the sun is 




^2889- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



not always precisely on time. He may be 
as much as fifteen minutes late or early, 
according to the season. And our modern 
days are measured according to the sun's 
average rate, so as to allow for this varia- 
tion and keep ever}' day exactly twenty- 
four hours long. This of course no sun-dial 
can possibly be made to do, since it must 
follow the actual sun. 

The sun-dial has remained in use to the 
present day. It seems strange to think of 
a sun-dial being used as a standard for 
setting clocks and actually to regulate the 
running of trains. But these things were 
done in civilized Europe within the last 
half century. It was only when the rail- 
road and the telegraph had made stand- 
ard time at once necessary and easy to 
obtain that the sun-dial altogether lost its 
position of authority. 

SuN-DiALS, Descriptions — Classical 
sun-dials were of many forms. Vitruvius, 
the Roman engineer, mentions thirteen, 
some of them portable; and ascribes the 
invention of the Hemicycle to the Baby- 
lonian astronomer and priest, Berosus. 
There was a famous dial of this type at the 
base of Cleopatra's Needle in Eg^'pt. It is 
now at the British Museum. And the 
Emperor Augustus, returning from his 
Egyptian wars, brought home to Rome 
an obelisk which he set up as the gnomon 
of a huge dial in the Campus Martius. 
At Athens there was the famous Tower of 
the Winds; octagonal in shape, with a 
weather vane above, and below around 
the tower, the hours and the winds, to 
each of which the Greeks gave a personal- 
ity and a name. There is a curious bit of 
accidental poetry in the marking of the 
sun-dial in Greece. The Greek numerals, 
like the Roman, were simply the letters 
.of their alphabet arranged in a certain 
order. The hot hours of the day from noon 
to four o'clock were those commonly de- 
voted by the Greeks to rest and recreation. 
Reckoning the day from sunrise, this 
period ran from the sixth hour through 
the ninth. And the numeral letters for 
Six, Seven, Eight and Nine, which marked 
those hours upon the dial, spell out the 
Greek word ZHOI, the imperative of the 
verb to live. The poet Lucian thus points 
the moral: 

Six hours to labor, four to leisure give; 
In them — so say the dialled hours — LIVE. 




The shepherds of the Pyrenees still con- 
sult their pocket dials. And the Turk 
makes a sun-dial of his two hands by hold- 
mg them up with the tips of the thumbs 
joined horizontally and the forefingers 
extended upward; so that the shadow of 
one forefinger falls toward the other and 
bj' its position roughly indicates the time. 
But even now, when it has nearly gone 
from practical use, the sun-dial, as an ap- 
propriate adornment of our public parks 
and our private gardens, is becoming in- 
creasingly fashionable in our own genera- 
tion. 

Sun-dials are common in almost 
all parts of the world, and not a 
!^^; few of them have in one way or 
another becom.e famous. The 
' largest is at Jaipur in India, and 
;was erected about 1730. Its 
j\ gnomon is ninety feet high and 
\- one hundred and forty-seven feet 
•J-7 long. A flight of stone steps run 
t .\-ciif "P ^^^ slope of it, and at the top 

^-J^ there is a sort of little watch- 

OLD tower. And the shadow, which falls 
^^LL° upon a great stone quadrant in- 

DiAL stead of upon a flat surface, moves 
at the rate of two and a half inches 
a minute. Another great dial is 
the so-called Calendar Stone of Mexico, 
which was made by the Aztec priests 
more than a hundred years before 
the Spaniards came. It weighs nearly 
fifty tons, and is not onlj'' a sun-dial but 
a representation of the zodiac and a dia- 
gram of the astronomical changes of the 
year: thus showing that the ancient Mex- 
icans in their own way paralleled the 
astrology of the Babylonians on the other 
side of the world. Probably the most 
expensive and elaborate sun-dial ever built 
was the one set up in 1669 by King Charles 
II of England in front of the banqueting 
house at White Hall in London. It was in 
the form of a tall pyramid on which were 
two hundred and seventy-one different 
dials, giving not only the hour of the day 
but various astronomical and geograph- 
ical indications as well. The place called 
Seven Dials in London takes its name 
from a tall pillar with sun-dials around its 
top which used to stand at the junction of 
seven streets radiating starwise from that 
spot as a center. The pillar was over- 
thrown ''n 1773 by a party of vandals 
digging for buried treasure which they be- 



•&289S* 



Appendix E 



I 



nr 



lieved to have been hidden 
beneath its base. Extensive list, 
descriptions and illustrations, 
See Book of Sun-dials, Mrs. 
Alfred Gatty; Sun-dials and 
Roses, Mrs. Alice Morse Earle. 
SuN-DiALS, Greek — 1. Di- 
ogenes asserts that the first 
Greek dial or gnomon was 
erected by Anaximander of 
Miletus. It was probably a ver- 
tical rod on a horizontal plane. 
This was two centuries after 
the Dial of Ahaz. 2. On the 
"Tower of the Winds" in 
Athens — a dial on each face. 

SuN-DiAL, Hollow — A form 
of sun-dial invented by the 
OLD Chaldean Berosus. A hollow 
ENGLISH hemisphere with a bead at its 
DIAL center, whose shadow indicated 

the hour of the day. 
Sun-Dial, Mottoes — On nearly all 
sun-dials both ancient and modern there 
there is inscribed a motto — usually of the 
moral significance of the passage of time. 
Very ancient also, as well as equally 
common in modern times is the custom of 
placing upon the sun-dial some appropri- 
ate motto expressive of the mystery of 
Time. There are hundreds of such mot- 
toes, ranging in sentiment from the old 
Roman one: Horas -non numero nisi 
Serenas. "I number no hours but the fair 
ones," to the couplet of a modern poet: 

"Time flies, you say? Ah no, 
Alas! Time stays; we go." 

And these two thoughts, expressed in 
many forms, represent fairly the tenor of 
most of them. There is a story of a lazy 
apprentice asking a motto for his dial, to 
whom his master sharply replied: "Be- 
gone about your business!" and the fel- 
low, appropriately enough, took that for 
the motto required. It is at least a familiar 
sentiment, especially in Puritan times; 
and equally so during 
the Middle Ages is that 
more mystic suggestion, 
Umbra Dei — "the Shad- 
ow of God." 

SuN-DlAL, PoRTABLE- 

Made in different shapes 
and upon different plans 
small enough to carry 




about. The most common form was the 
ring dial, consisting of a metal ring with 
a hole in it through which the light fell 
upon an inside ring adjustable to the day 
and month. It required careful orienting 
to be dependable as a time-indicator. 

SuN-DiALS, Roman — ^The first dial in 
Rome was set up B. C. 293 near the tem- 
ple of Quirinus by Papirius Cursor. It 
served ninety-nine years; then one more 
accurate was set up beside it. Before that, 
no time was noted except the rising and 
setting of the sun. Emperor Augustus 
erected a dial at Campus Martins. A dial 
captured in Sicily during the first Punic 
war was set up in the Forum about 263 
B. C. and used for years before they 
learned that it was inaccurate in that lati- 
tude, being designed for the latitude of 
Sicily. 

Sunk-Seconds — A dial in which the 
seconds circle is sunk below the rest of 
the dial. It allows the hour hand to be 
placed closer to the face thus making a 
thinner model possible. 

Supplementary Arc — See: "Lifting 
Arc." 

Sweep-Seconds — See: Center-Seconds. 

TABLE Roller — The roller of a lever 
escapement which carries the impulse 
pin. 

Tell-Tale Clock — A clock by whidTi 
a record is left of periodical visits of some 
one as a night-watchman. 

Template or Timplet — One of the 
four facets that surround a cut gem. 
■ Tenon — A projection at the end of a 
piece cut to fit into a corresponding mor- 
tise, 

Terry, Eli — ^The first man to make 
clocks by machinery in America. When it 
was learned that he planned to make two 
hundred clocks he was much laughed at. 
He was born at East Windsor, Conn., in 
1772. His first clocks were made by hand, 
the movements being of wood. He was the 
leading maker of wooden clocks in Amer- 
ica. He invented the shelf clock which 
contained distinctly new inventions and 
he introduced the pillar scroll-top case. 
He was a mechanical genius and contrib- 
uted a great deal to developing clock- 
making in America into a great industry. 
He died in 1852. 



-^2905* 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



Third Wheel — ^The wheel in the train 
between the center wheel and the fourth 
wheel. 

Thales — A celebrated Ionian astron- 
omer, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. 
He was born about 640 B. C, and is 
credited by Herodotus with having pre- 
dicted an eclipse of the sun occurring about 
609 B. C. He was the author of several 
solutions of geometrical problems. He 
died about 550 B. C. 

Thomas, Seth — Born at Wolcott, 
Conn., 1785. A very successful clockmaker 
who contributed probably more than any 
other man toward popularizing the mod- 
ern cheap clock. The Seth Thomas Clock 
Co., of today, he started in 1813 with 
twenty operatives. By 1853 it had nine 
hundred. He died in 1859. 

Three-Quarter Plate — ^A_ three- 
quarter plate watch is one in which there 
is a piece cut out from the top plate large 
enough to permit the balance to rotate on 
a level with that plate. It is the most 
common form at present in use in both 
cheap and high grade watches, and found 
in both "pillar" and "bridge" models. 

1^ Time-Candles — Candles in 

alternate black and white 
sections were used to mark 
the passage of time in Europe 
and Asia for a long time. In 
England and France they were 
used to limit the bidding at 
an auction. The phrase "by 
inch of candle" meant that 
the one bidding when the 
flame expired was the success- 
ful bidder. King Alfred is said 
to have used time-candles and to have 
inclosed them in thin horn plates to pro- 
tect them from drafts, thus originating 
the lantern. 

Timekeeper — Any device primarily 
concerned with measuring and indicating 
the sub-divisions of the day. 

ToMPioN, Thomas — "The father of 
English Watchmaking." Born 1638. He 
was the leading watchmaker at the court 
of Charles II. He found the construction 
of the time-keeping part of watches in a 
very indifferent condition and he left 
English clocks and watches the finest in 
the world, although many great improve- 
ments were made after his time. He as- 




sociated closely with such scientists as 
Hooke, and Barlow, and made practical 
application of their theories — two notable 
instances being the cylinder escapement 
and the balance-spring. Tompion was the 
first to number his watches consecutively 
for the purpose of identification though 
he did not so mark his early ones. 
There is a famous clock in the pumproom 
at Bath, England, of Tompion's construc- 
tion. Little is known of his domestic life 
but he appears to have been unmarried. 
He died in 1713 and is buried in West- 
minster Abbey. Tompion was master of 
the Worshipful Clockmakers' Company 
in 1704. 

Top Plate — ^The plate in a watch 
farthest from the dial. In full plate 
watches it is circular; in three-quarter 
plate or half-plate watches a part is cut 
away. 




Tower of the Winds — An octagonal 
tower north of the Acropolis of Athens 
spoken of as horological by Vario and 
Vitruvius. Believed to have had a sun-dial 
on each of its eight faces and to have con- 
tained a clepsydra fed by a spring. 

Train — ^The toothed wheels of a watch 
or clock which connect the barrel or fusee 
with the escapement. In a going-barrel 
watch the teeth about the barrel drive the 
center pinion which drives the center 
wheel and then in turn the third wheel 
pinion, third wheel, fourth wheel pinion 
and fourth wheel, escape pinion and 
escape wheel. 

Tripping — The running past the pal- 
let's locking face, of an escape wheel tooth. 

V ACHERON AND CoNSTANTIN — In 1840 
established the first complete watch 
factory in Switzerland. Not until later,. 



-e29iB* 



Appendix E 



however, was motor power used instead of 
foot-power; and later still manufacture 
by machinery. The work in this factory is 
carried on under a combination of all 
accepted methods. 

Vailly, Dom — A Benedictine monk of 
about 1690 who made a water clock which 
Beckmann says was the first to be con- 
structed on a really scientific principle. 
See Clocks, Interesting Old — Vailly's. 
' Van der Woerd, Charles — A promi- 
nent man in connection with watch man- 
ufacturing in this country. In 1864 he 
invented an automatic pinion cutter; in 
1874 an automatic screw machine. From 
1876-1883 he was superintendent of the 
Waltham factory. 

Verge — The pallet axis of the verge 
escapement. See diagram of Verge Escape- 
ment. It carries the balance at its top. 

Verge Watch — A watch with a verge 
escapement. 

VicK, Henry de. See De Vick, 

Volute — ^A flat spiral. 

Volute-Spring — A flat metallic spring 
coiled in a spiral conical form and com- 
pressible in x}ci& direction of its axis. 

''allingford, Richard — An English 
mechanic and astronomer of the 
fourteenth century. He made a clock 
which is supposed to have been the first 
that was regulated by a fly-wheel. Several 
authorities, however, claim that V/alling- 
ford's "clock" was actually a planetarium, 

Waltham — A town in Massachusetts — 
the site of the first successful watch fac- 
tory in America. At present a great watch 
making center. 

Vv^ATCH — In modern parlance, a small 
timepiece to carry about on the person. 
Formerly a timepiece which showed time 
in distinction to clock which struck time. 
Derham (1734) uses the term to indicate 
all timepieces driven by springs. The term 
may have been derived from the Swedish 
vacht, German wachen, or Saxon woecca. 
The spaces of time between the fillings of 
a clepsydra were also called "watches." 

Watch Collections — For list of prin- 
cipal collections, past and present, see 
Jewelers' Circular files August to Decem- 
ber 1915. List compiled by Major Paul M. 
Chamberlain of Chicago. For list of prin- 



cipal present collections, see Appendix to 
this volume derived from the Chamber- 
lain Compilation. 

Watchmakers' Schools — American. 
In America these schools usually teach 
watch-repairing and not the making of 
watches. Some of them off'er courses in 
making watches but few pupils avail 
themselves of these courses. List of: De 
Selins Watch School, Attica, Ind.; De- 
troit Technical Institute — Detroit, Mich.; 
Kansas City Watchmaking and Engrav- 
ing School, Kansas City, Mo.; Needles 
Institute of Watchmaking, Kansas City, 
Mo.; Bowman Technical School, Lan- 
caster, Pa.; Ries and Armstrong, Macon, 
Ga.; Drexler School for Watchmaking, 
Milwaukee, Wis.; Newark Watchmaking 
School, Newark, N. J.; Philadelphia Col- 
lege of Horology, Philadelphia, Pa.; St. 
Louis Watchmaking School, St. Louis, 
Mo.; Schwartzman's Trade Schools, San 
Francisco, Cal; Stone School of Watch- 
making, St. Paul, Minn.; Waltham Horo- 
logical School, Waltham, Mass.; Bradley 
Polytechnic Institute, Peoria, 111. 

Watchmakers' Schools, Switzer- 
land — Usually under government man- 
agement. Teach very thoroughly and 
completely the art of making a watch 
from the beginning. 

' Watch-Papers — During the 18th cen- 
tury it was a fad in England and America 
to carry small round papers, which ex- 
actly fitted the case of a watch. On these 
were portraits and verses, the latter of 
doubtful merit and usually of sinister or 
gloomy significance. 

Waterbury — A town in Connecticut 
long a center of clock and watch making 
in America. Home of the original Water- 
bury watch. Location of principal fac- 
tory of Robt. H. IngersoU & Bro., Jnanu- 
facturers of the IngersoU watches. 

Water-Clock — Any device, as a clep- 
sydra, for measuring time by the fall or 
flow of water. More commonly applied to 
the type m which wheels are turned by 
water or in such as those in which water 
sets machinery of some form in motion 
as Vailly's water-clock. See Clock, 
Vailly's. 

Wick Timekeeper — A wick or rope 
made of some fiber resembling flax or 
hemp with knots tied at regular intervals 



♦&292S- 



Encyclopedic Dictionary 



and so treated that upon ignition it would 
smolder instead of breaking into flame. 
Early in use in Japan and China. Time 
was estimated by the burning between 
the knots. 

WiECK, Henry De — See De Fick. 

WiLLARD, Aaron — Born 1757. Prob- 
ably learned his trade from his older 
brothers Simon and Benjamin. He made 
tall, and shelf clocks, later banjo clocks — - 
so-called from their shape — gallerj^ clocks, 
and regulators. A better business man 
than his brothers and successful from the 
start. His clocks did not lack decorative 
merit but were inferior to Simon Willard's. 
He made a greater number than his 
brother because more successful in a busi- 
ness way. 

WiLLARD, Benjamin — Older brother of 
Simon and Aaron Willard. Among the first 
of American clockmakers. Born 1743. 
Made, probably, only tall clocks with 
handsome cases and some with musical 
attachments. Not so good as the clocks of 
Aaron and Simon Willard but older and 
rarer now. 

WiLLARD, Simon — Born at Grafton, 
Mass., 1753. One of the earliest Massa- 
chusetts clock makers who disputed the 
claim of the Connecticut makers for the 
credit of revolutionizing^ the clock in- 
dustry in America. So far as cases go they 
excelled Terry, Thomas, and others. But 
to the Connecticut makers belongs the 
credit for having developed clock making 
into a great industry. Willard at first made 
eight-day tall clocks and shelf clocks, later 
wall clocks which he called "time pieces." 
In 1802 he practically abandoned the 
making of tall clocks, and confined him- 
self to his "time pieces" and special 
orders for tower and gallery clocks. For a 
detailed list of his productions see his 
Biography by John Ware Willard. He was 
an intimate friend of Jefferson, Madison 
and other leading men of the time. Died 
1848. 

Worshipful Clockmakers' Company 
OF London, The — Incorporated August 
22, 1631, under special charter by King 
Charles I of England. Was given the sole 
privilege of regulating the watch and 
clock trade in and for ten miles around 
London. 

Webster, Ambrose — Mechanical sup- 



erintendent, and later assistant superin- 
tendent, of the Waltham factory until his 
resignation In 1876. He systematized the 
work in the shop, standardized the meas- 
uring system, and forced automatic 
machinery to the front. He designed the 
first watch factory lathe with hard 
spindles and bearings of the two taper 
variety. He made the first interchangeable 
standard for parts of lathes. He invented 
many machines now in use, among them 
being the automatic pinion cutter. 

Weight-Clock — ^A clock whose driving 
power is a weight suspended by a cord 
wound on a drum or cylinder. 

Weights — The first clocks were made 
with a weight on a cord which was wound 
around a cylinder connected with thetraln. 
The weight descending caused the cyl- 
inder to revolve, setting the train in mo- 
tion. Too rapid unwinding was prevented 
by the escapement. The weight as a driv- 
ing power is still used, especially in large 
clocks. 

Wheel, Count— The wheel carrying 
the locking-plate in a striking mechanism. 

Year — ^Astronomically, the period of 
time occupied by the earth in making 
one complete revolution around the sun. 
The calendar year is an arbitrarily deter- 
mined division of time, approximating 
more or less closely the astronomical year. 
See Calendar, Gregorian. 

Zech, Jacob — Of Prague. Invented the 
fusee about 1525. The Society of 
Antiquaries possesses an example of his 
handiwork — a table time-piece with a 
circular brass-gilt case 9%^" in diameter 
and 5" high. For minute description see 
Archaeologia vol. xxxlii. 

Zero — A time-telling term originating 
or at least made common during the Great 
War. Word commonly used In a military 
sense to indicate a secret Instant of time 
from which an attack in its various stages 
is scheduled. 

Zodiac — An imaginary belt 16 degrees 
in width, spread equally on both sides 
of the ecliptic (q. v.). It is divided into 
twelve sections or "signs" which receive 
their distinguishing names from the twelve 
principal constellations within the belt. 
That is how the Babylonians learned to 



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Appendix E 




tell the time by looking at the sun and the 
stars. Only their whole problem was 
vastly complicated by the daily rotation 
of the earth 
on its axis, 
which of 
course makes 
the whole sky 
seem to turn 
in the oppo- 
site direction 
day by day. 
The earth 
turns in the 
samedirection 
that it goes 
round the sun, from West to East. So the 
heavens turn apparently from East to 
West, while the annual motion, as we saw 
just now by the illustration of the clock 
face, appears in its true direction, East- 
ward. Also, the great clock of the sky is 
not from our point of view horizontal, 
but stood up on edge; and not straight 
up and down even, but slanted at an 
angle. So its apparent movements are as 
it were in several directions at once, and 
the effect is very confusing. The real mo- 
tions as they actually do occur are very 
much simpler and easier to understand. 
But of these the Babylonians had no idea. 
They knew only what they could see; and 
it is all the more wonderful that they con- 
trived to reason out so much and so 
correctly. 

They mapped out a belt or zone around 
the sky, with the Ecliptic along the middle 
of it. This they divided into twelve equal 



parts of thirty degrees each, called Signs 
or Houses, and each containing a con- 
stellation. These constellations were in 
order, Aries or the Ram; Taurus or the 
Bull; Gemini or the Twins; Cancer or the 
Crab; Leo or the Lion; Virgo or the Virgin; 
Libra or the Scales; Scorpio or the Scor- 
pion; Sagittarius or the Archer; Cap- 
ricornus or the Goat; Aquarius or the 
Water-Carrier; and Pisces or the Fishes. 
We know these by their Latin names, and 
the whole zone by its Greek name of The 
Zodiac. But their original titles were 
much the same, only in a different lan- 
guage. The sun went through one of these 
constellations each month; and by his po- 
sition along the Zodiac they told the time 
of year. Thus the Spring Equinox was 
where the sun entered the House of the 
Ram; and that was for the ancients the 
first day of the new year. The House of 
the Crab was farthest North, and when 
the sun got there it was midsummer. 
The Autumn Equinox was in the House 
of the Scales; and when the sun reached 
the House of the Goat, he would be at the 
Southern or Winter end of his journey. 
Moreover, since the Moon and the Planets 
always keep close to the Ecliptic, their 
apparent motions all lie within the 
Zodiacal zone. And the Zodiac therefore 
represented the most important part of 
the heavens from the standpoint of keep- 
ing time; the part, that is, wherein all of 
those bodies which moved among the 
stars month by month and day by day 
appeared to have their motions. 



♦&294e^ 



ir4 



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